Workshop Series - Columbia Center for Oral History

April 25, 2013 Jennifer Scott is an Anthropologist, Public Historian, and Curator. She serves as the Vice Director/Director of Research at Weeksville Heritage Center, a historic house museum specializing in innovative study and applications of history, culture, the arts and civic engagement. In this public workshop, Scott discusses the role and possibilities of oral history for understanding activism and social change in the founding and expansion of a public history center. Columbia Center for Oral History

April 11, 2013 This public workshop by Sarah Mountz explores the uniquely embodied and relational nature of storytelling and story receiving in Life History Interviews conducted with LGBTQ Young Adults (age 18-25) who have previously been incarcerated in girls detention facilities in New York State. Interviews were conducted as part of a research study grounded in the principles of Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) and facilitated by a Community Advisory Board composed of practitioners, legal advocates, researchers, activists, and young people. This talk is part of the "Paul F. Lazarsfeld Lecture Series," co-sponsored by the Columbia Center for Oral History (CCOH) and the Oral History Master of Arts Program (OHMA).

March 14, 2013 In this workshop, Lilian Jiménez discusses the context surrounding the creation of "Antonia Pantoja: ¡Presente!" a documentary on the work of Puerto Rican educator and visionary leader, Antonia Pantoja. Utilizing the extensive seventeen-hour oral history Lillian Jiménez conducted with Dr. Pantoja and countless other oral histories of her collaborators, the documentary was fashioned after her death in 2002. For over thirty years, Jiménez has worked as a media arts center manager, independent producer, media activist, exhibitor, funder and educator. Columbia Center for Oral History

January 31, 2013 Alisa del Tufo, in a career dedicated to ending violence in the lives of women and girls, has founded three organizations: Sanctuary for Families, CONNECT, and Threshold Collaborative. She is the author of two books on domestic violence and child abuse, the recipient of Union Theological Seminary's prestigious Distinguished Alumna Award, and Colgate University's Humanitarian Award in 2008. She has used oral history as a method of finding new ways to address the complex issues of intimate partner and domestic violence since 1991. In this workshop she shares the history of this work and some of the sea changing ideas that have grown from it. Co-sponsored by the Columbia Center for Oral History, Oral History Master of Arts Program, Columbia University School of Social Work, the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, and Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics.

February 14, 2013 Doug Boyd Ph.D. serves as the Director of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries. In this workshop, Boyd discusses new models for engaging and empowering users of oral history in a digital environment. He will also discuss the web-based, system OHMS (Oral History Metadata Synchronizer) that inexpensively and efficiently enhances access to oral history online, created at the Nunn Center. Presented by the Columbia Center for Oral History, the Oral History Master of Arts, and the Digital Humanities Center

In this public workshop, Suzanne Snider discusses the use of community-based oral history to politicize victims of environmental injustice and to establish a collaborative public health report and map for The Newtown Creek Community Health and Harms Narrative Project. Snider is a writer and oral historian, who was an interviewer for Columbia University's Center for Oral History, the New York Academy of Medicine, HBO Productions, the Newtown Creek Community Health and Harms Narrative Project, and the Prison Public Memory Project, among others. She teaches at the New School University and is the founder/director of Oral History Summer School. Columbia Center for Oral History

November 15, 2012 In this public workshop, Andrea Dixon draws on preliminary fieldwork interviewing oral history interviewers about interviewing in order to investigate the epistemology of the interview—the cornerstone of her fieldwork and research. Dixon is a Ph.D Candidate in Communications at Columbia’s Journalism School and an alumnus of Columbia’s Oral History MA Program.

October 18, 2012 - Columbia Center for Oral History How, when, why and to whom do people talk about their pasts? What is the relationship between oral history and other genres of talk about the past? And what can looking at oral history as a particular intersection of history-making and talk tell us about the sources and deployment of the power of history to work in the world? In her research, Starecheski uses ethnographic fieldwork and interviews to explore these questions in one historically-minded intergenerational activist community: squatters in New York City.

October 4, 2012 - Columbia Center for Oral History Tom Naples, Peggy Milliron, and Michael Frisch make up the The 198 String Band. They are musicians, historians, and researchers from Buffalo, New York. Folk Music as Oral History is an interactive workshop combining live performance of Depression and New Deal music with photographs and audio excerpts of oral histories, poems, and narratives. Naples, Milliron, and Frisch explore folk music as oral history, and how music, images, and audio can be leveraged to link history to contemporary issues.

"Narrative in Conflict: Interviewing Colombians Displaced by Violence," September 18, 2012 Latin American politics journalist, Sibylla Brodzinsky, and Human Rights Watch researcher Max Schoening introduce their latest book, Throwing Stones at the Moon: Narratives from Colombians Displaced by Violence. Brodzinsky and Schoening discuss and read from their new book, a collection of first-hand narratives about people's forced displacement as a consequence of Colombia's internal armed conflict during the past five decades.

"In the Absence of the Archive: Oral History in Post-Conflict Societies" Mujib Mashal March 11, 2010 Oral History Research Office

"United In Anger: Historicizing ACT UP," November, 8, 2011 The ACT UP Oral History Project is an archive of more than 80 interviews with surviving members of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, a group that was formed in 1987 to raise public consciousness around the evolving epidemic. The project co-directors Jim Hubbard and Sarah Schulman to discuss the archive, the historicization of the AIDS crisis and AIDS activism, and their interviews with surviving members of ACT UP. Columbia Center for Oral History

"Multiple Memories of Europe" Prof. Luisa Passerini March 25, 2010 Oral History Research Office © 2010 Columbia University

Columbia University - November 22, 2011 Daniel Kerr, a professor of history at American University, discusses research he conducted with the Cleveland Homeless Oral History Project where he has interviewed close to 200 homeless people and has facilitated dozens of workshops and meetings in the shelters and drop-in centers of Cleveland, Ohio. Focusing on his work with the project, Kerr examines how oral history research can move beyond professional and academic aims and actively facilitate social change. Columbia Center for Oral History

Independent oral historian and founder of Oral History Productions, Elisabeth Pozzi-Thanner discusses her past and current work in the US and Austria, and chronicles her path to becoming an oral historian. Elisabeth¹s work is wide-ranging and includes interviewing and interpretation for USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education and the September 11, 2001 Narrative and Memory Project at Columbia University Columbia Center for Oral History

Oral History Research Office at Columbia University

"What We Bring to the Table: Implications of Personal and Cultural Assumptions for the Oral History Interview." Columbia School of Social Work lecturer Lauren Taylor examines both inter-subjectivity and the implications of personal and cultural assumptions in oral history interviewing. Drawing from both oral history and psychotherapy interviews, private and public themes were explored in a sociocultural context. Participants learned how developing self-awareness can be used to positive effect to enhance the inter-subjective relationship. Columbia Center for Oral History

Gerald Oppenheimer 2009-2010 Oral History Workshops.

Alessandro Portelli is a professor of American Literature at the University of Rome. He is author of The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History; The Battle of Valle Guilia: Oral History and the Art of Dialogue; and The Order Has Been Carried Out: History, Memory and Meaning of a Nazi Massacre in Rome, winner of the prestigious Viareggio prize in Italy. His forthcoming book, They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History, is based on more than 30 years of interviews with 150 Harlan County men and women who tell the story of their region, from pioneer times through the dramatic mining strikes of the 1930s and '70s, up to the present. His essays on oral history and narrative have appeared in many journals throughout the world. Recorded 6/7/2010

Helen Benedict, "The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq" Book Talk 10/15/09 Oral History Research Office at Columbia University

Journalism professor Helen Benedict's presentation focused on the relationship between interviewing and fiction in her new book "Sand Queen," which was culled from the real life stories of female soldiers and Iraqis. Benedict spent nearly three years interviewing 40 female soldiers who had served in Iraq.

Alessandro Portelli, "America and the Underground: Origins, History and Identity in a Periphery of Rome" Alessandro Portelli is a professor of American Literature at the University of Rome. He is the author of The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History; The Battle of Valle Guilia: Oral History and the Art of Dialogue; and The Order Has Been Carried Out: History, Memory and Meaning of a Nazi Massacre in Rome, winner of the prestigious Viareggio prize in Italy. His forthcoming book, They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History, is based on more than 30 years of interviews with 150 Harlan County men and women who tell the story of their region, from pioneer times through the dramatic mining strikes of the 1930s and '70s, up to the present. His essays on oral history and narrative have appeared in many journals throughout the world. Recorded Monday, June 14