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Between the Raw and the Cooked: New Tools, Capacities, and Approaches for the Oral History Kitchen (Michael Frisch)
This hands-on workshop will explore how dramatic new tools and approaches bring a dialogic "shared authority" understanding not just to oral history interviewing, but to multimedia processing of oral history collections. In a field traditionally shaped by either an “archival sensibility” (managing the “raw”) – or a “documentary sensibility” (producing the “cooked” – a particular film, exhibit, research publication), these tools and approaches embody a practical, reachable, and shareable “instrumental sensibility” – working in the oral history “kitchen” to DO something(s), mapping documentation in a spectrum of dimensions for a range of immediate uses and applications reaching a range of audiences. Participants in this hands-on Workshop will be introduced to these tools and approaches, from accessible photo-elicitation short-form oral history to exercises taking a sample long-form oral history interview from a base AI transcription to editing and “mapping” verbatim and multimedia clips.
Michael Frisch was for many years Professor of American Studies and History at the University at Buffalo and the State University of New York. He was President of the American Studies Association (2000–2001), and the Oral History Association (2009–2010), and editor of the Oral History Review (1986–1996). He is author of A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History (1990) and (with photographer Milton Rogovin) Portraits in Steel (1993). He recently moved into consulting and software development helping organizations to create meaningful access to the stories, photos, and oral histories they generate and collect through his Randforce Associates, LLC consulting office. He has focused on new tools and approaches for media-linked multi-dimensional transcription, multimedia content management, and rich indexing – ways of “putting oral history to use(s).” He has formed a partnership with a “short-form oral history” web-app, PixStori, through which users add voice, sound, and stories to photographs, sharing these in social multi-media communities.
Twice-told tales. Narrative and Testimony (Alessandro Portelli)
A comparative reading of three interviews with the same person (an Auschwitz survivor from Rome) to open a conversation on interviewing: context, relationship, technique, purpose, memory.
Alessandro Portelli has taught American Literature at the Universities of Siena and Rome. He has served as an advisor on historical memory to the Mayor of Rome and is the founder of the Circolo Gianni Bosio, an independent organization for the critical study and promotion of peoples' cultures, oral history, and folk music. He has been a visiting professor and research fellow at several universities worldwide. His work published in English includes The Death of Luigi Trastulli and other Stories. Form and Meaning in Oral History (1991), The Text and the Voice. Writing, Speaking and Democracy in American Literature (1994), The Battle of Valle Giulia. Oral History and the Art of Dialogue (1997), The Order has Been Carried Out. History, Memory and Meaning of a Nazi Massacre in Rome (2003), and They Say in Harlan County: an Oral History (2011).
Narrating the Now: How to Conduct Oral History of the Ongoing Crisis (Anna Wylegała)
While oral history has traditionally been used to explore a rather distant past, it can also be effectively employed to understand the present. During this workshop, you will learn how to ask and listen about recent events and ongoing issues to expand your research experience, enrich your community, and gather valuable material that can serve various purposes. The workshop will address the nuances of working on topics related to crises and conflicts, including the researcher's positionality, ethical and methodological challenges, and the safety of the interviewer, interviewee, and gathered data. While the workshop is grounded mainly in the experience of conducting oral history interviews about the Russian full-scale aggression to Ukraine since 2022 (https://u-core.org/), the participants will acquire general skills and knowledge that can be used in various geographical and social contexts.
Anna Wylegała is a sociologist and Associate Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences. Her work focuses on the social history of World War II and the immediate postwar period. She is also interested in the qualitative methodology of social research, oral history, and memory studies. She is author of Displaced Memories: Remembering and Forgetting in Post-War Poland and Ukraine (2019) and Był dwór, nie ma dworu. Reforma rolna w Polsce [There was an estate, there is no estate anymore. Agricultural reform in Poland] (2021). She has also co-edited two other volumes: The Burden of the Past: History, Memory and Identity in Contemporary Ukraine (2020), and No Neighbors’ Lands: Vanishing Others in Postwar Europe (2023). Currently, she is a leader of the Polish part of the “24.02.22, 5 am: Testimonies from the War” project, focused on collecting the oral history of Ukrainian refugees after 2022.
