Historians who use interviewing techniques are special: we get to make our own documents. In most branches of history, this is considered cheating. Getting to participate in the creation of historical documents creates unique opportunities and challenges for the historian. It can be tremendous fun as well.

    Unlike other forms of historical research, doing oral history is a kind of performance. You yourself become part of the historical record. The richness of your source depends on how alert, prepared, and sensitive you are at the moment—tomorrow, both you and your source will be different; the opportunity may be lost.

    Oral history is potentially a radical project. It can give authorship to historical actors who traditionally have had no power, no voice. It can be democratizing, a tool of social leveling. It gives the weight of history to subjectivity, memory, and feeling. It can be a tool of advocacy, of empathy—or of reinforcing the status quo. Above all, it is a tool of connection. It changes the historian and the actor, often profoundly.

    In this course, we will harness the power of oral history for ends you are interested in.

Course approach:

    The course will not have conventional lectures. Instead, class sessions will be divided into Discussions and Workshops. Discussions will be seminar-style guided conversations about issues in oral history, from theory to method to style. Alternating with the discussions, workshops will feature  light to non-existent reading; emphasis will be on round-table discussion of the process of planning, conducting, and interpreting your own oral history interviews. You will do several short interviews as exercises.

    The final project for the course will be an oral history interview of at least an hour in length, which you have conducted, transcribed, and interpreted—all with the support and guidance of me and the rest of the class. See Grading for more specifics.