Oral history is a conversation about the past that takes place in the present and is oriented towards the future. How is this future orientation made real?
Oral history as a research practice, particularly in the United States, has been defined by a focus on recording and archiving in institutional repositories. But people can be archives too, and oral history-telling practices more broadly often depend on embodied memory, on person-to-person transmission. And because people have been formally recording and archiving oral histories for over seventy years, we are now living in the futures imagined by earlier generations of oral historians. How do these voices from the past function in our present/their future? Looking at examples from digital archiving to indigenous oral history practices, in this series we will examine how the various ways that oral history is projected into the future work, and how they shape our practices as oral historians.
September 13, 2018, 6:10 – 7:30 PM
Pan Dulce: Breaking Bread with the Past
Maria Cotera
October 4, 2018, 6:10 – 7:30 PM
The Uses of Narrative in Organizing for Social Justice
Sujatha Fernandes
October 18, 2018, 6:10 – 7:30 PM
Confessions of an Accidental Oral Historian, Archivist, and Podcaster
Eric Marcus
November 1, 2018, 6:10 – 7:30 PM
Accelerating Change: Oral History, Innovation, and Impact
Doug Boyd
November 29, 2018, 6:10 – 7:30 PM
Words Transmitted; Worlds Apart
Fernanda Espinosa