Oral Histories and Archives

Oral histories are sources that offer perspectives, life experiences, and ways of knowing that official written records can overlook or actively seek to erase from the historical record. This course explores the methods, theories, practices, and controversies that have shaped oral history as an academic field while paying close attention to the contributions and critiques from activist oral history practitioners. In weekly readings and discussions, students gain an appreciation for this at times fraught history, while also gaining a foundation in current best practices for doing oral history. Students also have multiple opportunities for putting their oral history training into practice. The first half of the course is focused on student engagement with oral history theory and scholarship alongside existing oral history collections (as primary sources) toward developing an understanding of the field and studying various models for doing oral history. In the second half of the course, students develop and execute an oral history project that involves background research, research design, interviewing (with digital recording), transcription, and presentation of research findings in both oral and written formats. Over the semester, students learn how to incorporate oral histories into their research, with attention to research ethics and an understanding that oral history research cannot be conducted independently of other methods of historical research. Students practice oral history methods, engaging with oral sources to learn ways of interpreting and analyzing oral histories.