Favorite readings on oral history methods written by Black, Indigenous and people of color authors?
Dear colleagues-
I am, as I do every summer, revising and updating the syllabus for the foundational Oral History Fieldwork, Production and Archiving class I teach every fall for OHMA students. I have done and am continuing to do my own research on this, but also wanted to reach out and ask if you all have favorite readings on oral history methods written by Black, Indigenous and people of color authors. Feel free to add suggestions here or email them to me. I will share the gathered suggestions. Thank you!
Here are the topics I plan to cover in the class, FYI:
Simple Remote Audio Recording
What is Oral History?
In-person Audio Recording
Project Design
Advanced Remote Audio Recording
Legal and Ethical Issues
Discussion of project designs; field notes; interviewing protocols. IRB.
Transcribing and Indexing
Interviewing Strategies: Self-Care
Interviewing and Audio Recording Troubleshooting
Sharing and discussion of audio recordings; fine-tuning our recording and interviewing skills.
Doing and Teaching Oral History from an Anti-Oppression Standpoint
Decolonizing Oral History
Digital Archiving
What is metadata? What are the archiving best practices for oral history, and how can we plan to meet them?
Transcribing, Indexing and Archiving: OHMS
Beyond the Seated One-on-One Interview
Sustaining Our Work: Fundraising and Developing Support for Oral History
Balancing Research and Life History; Using Research in Interviews
Becoming an Interviewer: The Oral History Relationship
The Iterative Process of Project Development
The Embodied Interview
Oral History and Anthropology: Fieldwork and Ethnography of Oral History
Discussion of relationship between participant observation and interviewing and between anthropological life histories and oral histories. Discussion of anthropological approaches to the study of oral history as a social practice.
Amy Starecheski, PhD (she/her)
Director
Columbia Oral History MA Program
212-851-4395 aas39@columbia.edu
Office: @ home!
--NYC Covid-19 Oral History, Narrative and Memory Archive, Co-Director
--Mott Haven Oral History Project, Founder
--Ours to Lose: When Squatters Became Homeowners in New York City, University of Chicago Press. (And in podcast form, via 99% Invisible)
1 Reply
Post ReplyAmy, the author is not, to the best of my knowledge, an Indigenous person, but the article is an excellent assessment of how a project went terribly off the rails because it don't take care to understand approaches to knowledge within and internal politics of an Indigenous community (or communities):
• Shell-Weiss, Melanie. “Good Intentions: Grappling with Legacies of Conflict and Distrust Surrounding a Native American Oral History Project One Generation Later.” Oral History Review 46, no. 1 (Winter/Spring 2019): 104-133. --Linda Shopes