Storied Lives: Methods in Oral History

AFRAMER 223 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

How can we understand the lives of people who are excluded from the historical record? How might attention to the time and space in which words are spoken allow us to treat oral history as text, and text as oral history? This course explores storytelling as a foundational element of the human experience. It analyzes the myriad ways in which orality has been used to consolidate origin stories, document events, communicate embodied experience, and transfer ancestral knowledge. By centering methodology, students will learn to prepare, collect, analyze, and share oral histories in a variety of written, digital, and artistic forms. Topics of discussion include how to build relationships, conduct interviews around difficult topics, and use citational practices that honor nonhuman and other-than-human actors. Required readings pair classic and new oral histories with texts on the theory, practice, and ethics of storytelling. By centering works by Black, Indigenous, gender minorities, and writers of color, the course examines how storytelling is used to establish and redistribute power. At the end of the semester, students will become familiar with audio-visual recording technology, learn to navigate transcription and coding software, and be able to conduct, transcribe and analyze an oral history.