History 394Z [2733] and 594 [2763]: Readings and Practicum in Oral and Video History
Fall, 2004
Time: Mondays, 4:40-6:40

Instructor: Prof. Gerald Zahavi
Room: Digital Workshop 4 (History Smart
           Classroom, Science Library)
Office Hours: Mon./Weds. 10:00-12:00
          (and by appointment)
Office: Ten Broeck 202
Email: gz580@albany.edu
Phone: 442-4780

Course Description:

This course is intended to be both a theoretical and practical introduction to oral and video history. It covers a wide territory--from the gathering of oral/video testimony to the production of theatrical plays, radio programs, films, and television documentaries based on collected interviews. We’ll explore several theoretical perspectives behind approaches to interviewing, recording, and editing the diverse and historically-conditioned experiences of elites and non-elites (political leaders, scientists, farmers, immigrants, blue-collar workers, teachers, domestic servants, and so on). We’ll probe the problems that necessarily arise when oral historians evoke and interpret the memories of those who lie outside their own horizons. From in-class discussions of memory, historical distortion, and interview theory, to technical instruction on the use of audio, video, and transcribing equipment, the course is designed to teach students critical and practical skills and to demonstrate the potential of this important research and presentation methodology.

The following topics will be covered in this course:

• Introduction to oral and video history
• Memory, truth and distortion in oral history: questions of subjectivity and reliability
• Ethical and legal aspects of oral history
• The interview process and creating oral "texts" (pre-interview preparation, questions, technical issues, post-interview, follow-up)
• Racial, ethnic, gender, psychological, and ideological barriers and challenges in oral interviewing
• Utilizing oral history in research/print
• Transcribing, and indexing oral histories
• Editing oral interviews for print and production
• Archiving oral history (sound quality, tape preservation, tape duplication)
• Oral history as public history: radio, theatre, and public presentation
• Introduction to videohistory and documentary film/video making
• Oral history and the world wide web
  

Equipment/Software:

There are a variety of recorders now available for recording oral interviews: analog, minidisc, DAT, and hard drive. Some pro-level analog recording equipment will be available on short-term loan to class members. Ideally, however, for more extensive recording and maximum flexibility, students should consider purhcasing a good quality portable recorder and a stand-alone microphone (they are readily available through local vendors like Radio Shack, Drome Sound, Mars Music, or through professional audio suppliers such as B&H Photo-Video-Pro Audio Corp [www.bhphotovideo.com], BSW [http://www.bswusa.com], Bradley Broadcast [http://www.bradleybroadcast.com], Sweetwater [http://www.sweetwater.com], and Full Compass [http://www.fullcompass.com]). E-Bay is a good source of used equipment, though there are many other used equipment and auction sites now available on the Internet. Students interested in videotaping interviews should obviously have access to decent quality cameras (VHS, SVHS, 8 mm or Hi-8, or best of all, digital). The camera should have a microphone plug for attaching an external microphone. You should also have a sturdy tripod. I'll review equipment issues in more detail in class.

The days of dedicated transcription machines (Dictaphones and other such devices) are over. They have been replaced by computer-based transcribers and transcribing software. There are a number of transcription playback programs available commercially and via Internet downloads. One--Express Scribe--is actually free; it "is installed on the typist's computer and can be controlled using the keyboard (with 'hot' keys) and/or a foot pedal. This computer transcriber application features variable speed playback, foot pedal operation, file management and more." As noted, you do not actually need the food pedal to operate this program. To download, go to: http://www.nch.com.au/scribe/index.html.

Writing, Project, and Oral Presentation Requirements:

Assignments will be in the form of short essays and reviews focused on assigned readings, projects (including exercises in transcribing and editing oral interviews), AND a final major paper or project, either: 1) FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS: a 20-25 page research paper heavily based on oral and/or video interviews conducted during the course of the semester, FOR UNDERGRADUATES: a 12-15 page research paper heavily based on oral and/or video interviews conducted during the course of the semester, OR 2) a multimedia project heavily utilizing interviews, and including original writing (length according to the above guidelines) and graphical work (not merely a collection of links and transcribed interviews!!!). I'll go into more detail on this in class. Two copies of your final paper/project should be ready by the next-to-the-last class to be distributed to me and an assigned reviewer. Students electing to compose an on-line project should distribute the URL to the class. Other final project options are possible, including documentary production. Please consult with me on these options.

Graduate students will be expected to introduce and lead one class discussion of assigned readings in the course of the semester.

Please make sure that all written assignements handed in are typed. Papers should follow citation guidelines outlined in Kate Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (latest edition). Several excellent on-line footnoting and writing guides are available; for a guide to footnoting, go to: TURABIAN/CHICAGO STYLE GUIDE. For an on-line guide to grammar go to: PURDUE UNIVERSITY: GUIDE TO GRAMMAR, SPELLING, PUNCTUATION.

Grades:

Grades will be based on: class participation (20%); projects and reviews (40%); and the final paper (40%).

Academic Dishonesty (University policy):

It is assumed that your intellectual labor is your own. If there is any evidence of academic dishonesty, including plagiarism, the minimum penalty will be an automatic failing grade for that piece of work. Plagiarism is taking (which includes purchasing) the words and ideas of another and passing them off as one's own work. If another person's work is quoted directly in a formal paper, this must be indicated with quotation marks and a citation. Paraphrased or borrowed ideas are to be identified by proper citations.

Required Reading:

1. Ronald Bayer and Gerald M. Oppenheimer, AIDS Doctors: Voices from the Epidemic, an Oral History (Oxford University Press, 2002).

2. Ira Berlin, ed. Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation [Paperback edition] (New Press, 2000).

3. Studs Terkel, My American Century (New Press, 1998).

4. Donald A. Ritchie, Doing Oral History: Practical Advice and Reasonable Explanations for Anyone. 2nd edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

5. Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson, eds., The Oral History Reader. (Routledge, 1998).

6. Miscellaneous articles, chapters, manuscripts, documents, and text/audio interview selections--listed under weekly reading assignments below and available on Electronic Reserve.

Recommended Journals:

There are two major English-language journals that extensively cover oral history methodology and practice: Oral History Review and International Journal of Oral History. Students interested in keeping up with the field should become familiar with both. Those looking for a comprehensive and relatively up-to-date bibliography on methodology and works that utilize oral history should peruse Donald A. Ritchie's bibliography at the end of Doing Oral History.

SYLLABUS

Please note that the recommended readings section of this syllabus will be updated and revised during the course of the semester.

Monday, August 30: Introduction to the Course

Monday, September 6: NO CLASS

Monday, September 13: Truth, Untruth, Facts, and Memory in Oral History

Required Readings:

1) Thucydides, Orality, and History. Read chapter 1 in Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War.

2) Studs Terkel, My American Century (New Press, 1998), pp. 3-17, 83-91, 301-377.

3) Donald A. Ritchie, Doing Oral History, pp.19-46.

4) Perks and Thomson, eds., The Oral History Reader, pp. 9-74; 269-299, 311-332..

5) Alessandro Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History, Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1991), pp. 1-26 ("The Death of Luigi Trastulli,"). [Electronic Reserve]

6) Studs Terkel, Jan Vansina, Alice Kessler Harris, Dennis Tedlock, Saul Benison, Ronald J. Grele, "It's Not the Song, It's the Singing: Panel discussion on Oral History," in Ronald J. Grele, ed., Envelopes of Sound [Electronic Reserve]

Recommended Readings:

1) John C. Dann, ed., The Revolution Remembered: Eyewitness Accounts of the War of Independence (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1980), xi-39. (forward, introduction, and chapter 1). [Electronic Reserve]

2) Memory and History: Essays on Recalling and Interpreting Experience, Edited by Jaclyn Jeffrey and Glenace Edwall (UPA, 1994) [http://www3.baylor.edu/Oral_History/memory%20book%20website/memorybook.htm]

3) Karen E. Fields, "What One Cannot Remember Mistakenly," in Jaclyn Jeffrey and Glenace Edwall, eds., Memory and History: Essays on Recalling and Interpreting Experience (University Press of America, 1994): 89-103. [Electronic Reserve]

4) Alessandro Portelli, "Deep Exchange: Roles and Gazed in Multivocal and Multilateral Interviewing," in The Battle of Valle Giula: The Art of Dialogue in Oral History (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), pp. 24-39. [Electronic Reserve]

5) ______________, "There's Gonna Always Be A Line: History-Telling as a Multivocal Art," in The Battle of Valle Giula: The Art of Dialogue in Oral History (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), pp. 72-78. [Electronic Reserve]

Assignment:

Utilizing the assigned readings as your major sources, write a succinct 3-page essay discussing the nature, promise, and limits of oral history. .

Monday, September 20: Inteviewing, I: Practical and Technical Issues

Required Readings:

1) Charles Hardy III, Recording Oral Histories. [Electronic Reserve]

2) Donald A. Ritchie, Doing Oral History, pp.47-64, 84-109.

3) Charles T. Morrissey, "The Two Sentence Format as an Interviewing Technique in Oral History Fieldwork," Oral History Review 15 (Spring 1987), 43-53. [Electronic Reserve]

4) Perks and Thomson, eds., The Oral History Reader, 101-125, 140-144, 157-171.

Recommended Resource Readings and Reference Works:

1) Marantz PMD222 Portable Cassette Recorder Manual. [Electronic Reserve]

2) Information on minidisk recorders: www. minidisc.org.

3) http://www.baylor.edu/Oral_History/
Institute for Oral History, Baylor University. See, in particular, the on-line workshop on interviewing..

Monday, September 27: Interviewing, II: Practice Sessions

Recommended WWW Sites:

1) Southern Oral History Program Guidebook. Excellent "how to" manual. http://www.sohp.org/howto/guide/

2) The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's (USHMM) Department of Oral History. Oral History Interview Guidelines.
The USHMM has made its 140-page book of interview guidelines available tot he general public. It "provides guidance on the many aspects of conducting an interview. Included are step-by-step suggestions for making initial contact with a potential interviewee, conducting research and preparing questions for the interview, and producing finding aids such as transcripts and summaries after the interview." To obtain an Acrobat Adobe PDF file version of the guide, go to: http://www.ushmm.org/archives/oralpdf.htm

3) Free Speech Movement: Student Protest - U.C. Berkeley, 1964-65.
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu:2020/dynaweb/teiproj/fsm/oral
Includes searchable oral history transcripts online, documents, video and sound recordings, bibliographies, and more. A co-operative project between The Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley and the Free Speech Movement Archives.

4) Voices from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection.
This is an online presentation of an ethnographic field collection documenting the everyday life of residents of Farm Security Administration (FSA) migrant work camps in central California in 1940 and 1941. The collection includes an extensive audio archive of interviews. Go to: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/afctshtml/toddbibperformerindex.html

5) Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World Web site.
Created by Dr. James Leloudis and Dr. Kathryn Walbert as a part of the American Historical Association's program Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age. The Web site includes interview selections from hundreds of interviews with working-class Southerners used by the six authors of the book Like a Family (1987, 2000). The interviews were originally conducted by the Southern Oral History Program in the Piedmont Industrialization Project of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Go to: http://www.ibiblio.org/sohp/overview.html

6) Southern Oral History Program. Archives.
On-line selections from the Southern Oral History Program. Includes interviews with Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Faubus, Orval and others. Go to: http://www.sohp.org/archives/index.html

7) The Suffragists Oral History Project (transcripts only).
Interviews conducted inthe 1970s under the auspices of the Bancroft Library's Regional Oral History Office with twelve leaders and participants in the woman's suffrage movement. Go to: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/BANC/ROHO/ohonline/suffragists.html

8) U.S. Senate Oral History Project.
The Senate Historical Office under Associate Historian Donald A. Ritchie interviews former senators, Senate officers, and staff. The project is beginning to make full interviews available online from its collection. Go to: http://www.senate.gov/learning/learn_history_oralhist.html

9) Selections from History Matters: Many Pasts.
Selections from a Web resource guide produced at George Mason University devoted to providing useful materials for teachers and students of U.S. history. The "Many Pasts" section of the site offers numerous excerpts from oral histories. Most of the selections are short. Go to: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/browse/manypasts/.

10) Rutgers Oral History Archives of World War II
Text only. Extensive collection of oral histories pertaining to World War II. http://fas-history.rutgers.edu/oralhistory/orlhom.htm.

11) Studs Terkel Interviews
http://www.studsterkel.org/

Assignment:

Listen to an oral interview selection available on the electronic reserve site (in MP3) OR via links to WWW on-line oral histories in one of the collections listed below or above (but make sure you select interviews that you can listen to, that is, that have the audio available on line). Write a 3-5 page critique/analysis of the interview. Make sure your review covers both substantive and technical matters: interviewer-interviewee interaction, ethical issues, questioning strategy, content, sound quality, and so on. To access local interviews, go to: Electronic Reserve and select the folder with "Audio Files - Interviews." You may also select interviews from the following sites, as well as find your own (please specify the full URL if you are selecting a site not listed here).

1) Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Web Site. Oral histories.
http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/audio/default.html

2) Voice/Vision. Holocaust Survivor Oral Histories.
Dr. Sid Bolkosky's collection of interviews with Nazi Holocaust survivors. Bolkosky is Professor of History at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and has interviewed over 150 survivors (over 330 hours of recordings). Some of these recordings are available on line as Adobe Acrobat file with audio links. http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/.

3) The Virtual Oral/Aural History Web Site.
http://www.csulb.edu/voaha
The Virtual Oral/Aural History Archive, directed by Sherna Berger Gluck and Kaye Briegelat at California State University/Long Beach is a collaborative project of the campus' Academic Computing Services, the College of Liberal Arts, and the University Library. The searchable site contains hundreds of hours of oral interviews on a variety of topics, many specific to California social and political history.

Monday, October 4: Ethical and Legal Aspects of Oral History

Required Readings:

1) Donald A. Ritchie, Doing Oral History, pp. 75-79, 182-184, 252-259.

2) Selection from John A. Neuenschwander, Oral History and the Law (revised edition) Albuquerque, NM: Oral History Association, 2002. [Electronic Reserve]

3) Daphne Patai, "U.S. Academics and Third World Women: Is Ethical Research Possible?" from Sherna Gluck and Daphne Patai, eds., Women's Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History, New York: Routledge, 1991. [Electronic Reserve]

4) "Protecting Human Beings: Institutional Review Boards and Social Science Research" (2000). American Association of University Professors.[http://www.aaup.org/statements/Redbook/repirb.htm]

5) Interview release forms. [Electronic Reserve]

6) Michael Seadle, "Whose Rules? Intellectual Property, Culture, and Indigenous Communities," D-Lib Magazine (March 2002).

7) "Should All Disciplines Be Subject to the Common Rule? Human Subjects of Social Science Research," Academe (May-June, 2002).

8) Office of Sponsored Research ~ Human Subject Research Information and Forms. http://www.albany.edu/tree-tops/research/osp/humansubjects_page.html

9) The Belmont Report. Office of the Secretary Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research. The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research (April 18, 1979). http://ohrp.osophs.dhhs.gov/humansubjects/guidance/belmont.htm

Monday, October 11: Processing, Editing, and Publishing Oral Histories

Required Readings:

1) Willia K. Baum, Oral History for the Local Historical Society, 3rd Edition, revised (AASLH, 1987), pp. 35-48. [Electronic Reserve]

2) Michael Frisch, A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History (SUNY Press, 1990), chapter 5 (Preparing Interview Transcripts for Documentary Publication: A Line-by-Line Illustration of the Editing Process"). [Electronic Reserve]

3) Dennis Tedlock, "Learning to Listen: Oral history as Poetry," in Grele, ed., Envelopes of Sound, 107-125. [Electronic Reserve]

4) Donald A. Ritchie, Doing Oral History, pp. 64-75, 110-133..

5) Perks and Thomson, eds., The Oral History Reader, 365-378, 389-392.

6) Studs Terkel, My American Century (New Press, 1998), 91-160. See also:
http://www.studsterkel.org/

7) Selections from Kenneth L. Kann, Comrades and Chicken Ranchers: The Story of a California Jewish Community, (Cornell University Press, 1993), selection. [Electronic Reserve]

8) ___________, "Who's Going to Dance With Somebody Who Calls You a Mainstreeter": Communism, Culture, and Community in Sheridan County, Montana, 1918-1934" The Great Plains Quarterly, 16 (Fall/Winter 1996). [Electronic Reserve]

Recommended WWW Sites:

1) Transcribing Style Guide. Institute for Oral History. Baylor University. http://www.baylor.edu/Oral_History/Styleguide.html

2) Southern Oral History Program. Field notes, model form: http://www.sohp.org/howto/guide/howto_111e.html

3) The Youngstown State University Oral History Collection.
On-line transcripts of interviews focused on the history of northeastern Ohio. "The Oral History Collection houses over eleven hundred interviews including personal narratives focusing on World War II, Vietnam, Youngstown College (University), Greek, Puerto Rican, Romanian, Russian and Italian culture, industry (steel, pottery, brick, labor relations, coal, and railroads), politics, the Holocaust, and religion." Go to: http://www.maag.ysu.edu/oralhistory/oral_hist.html

4) Oral History Online! Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Part of The Bancroft Library Regional Oral History Office (ROHO), this site provides full-text transcripts of more than 55 fully-searchable interviews online. Series include “The University History Series” (on the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, specifically noted under October 2nd assignment above), “The Suffragists Oral History Project” (which includes interviews with twelve women active in the suffrage movement, also specifically noted under October 2nd assignment above), the “Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement,” “The Earl Warren Oral History Project” (which emphasizes Earl Warren's years as governor of California), and the “Health Care, Science, and Technology” project (which includes interviews focusing on the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco between 1981and 1984). Go to: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/BANC/ROHO/ohonline/

Assignment (2 parts):

A) Conduct and "process" a short interview. This should include:

1) preparing a release form (and getting it signed)
2) conducting the interview
3) indexing the entire interview
4) transcribing (you need only transcribe 5 pages for the purpose of this exercise)
5) filling out documentation and bibliographic summary forms.

B) Submit a one-page final project/paper proposal summarizing your topic and the main sources you intend to use.

Monday, October 18: Distance and Insight/Inside and Outside: Racial, Gender, Ethnic, Psychological, and Ideological Boundaries in Oral Interviewing

Required Readings:

1) Ira Berlin, ed. Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation (New Press, 2000).

2) Alison Owings, Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993). Selection. [Electronic Reserve]

3) Perks and Thomson, eds., The Oral History Reader, pp. 87-100, 172-182, 333-356.

Recommended Readings:

Mary Palevsky, Atomic Fragments: A Daughter's Questions (University of California Press, 2000), 1-17, 41-68. [Electronic Reserve]

Recommended WWW Sites:

1) Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 [http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/]
Part of the Library of Congress's American Memory Project, containing more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves.

2) Remembering Slavery [http://rememberingslavery.org]
Web Site produced to accompany the book and audiocassette Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk about Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation, by Ira Berlin, Marc Favreau, and Steven Miller.

3) American Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology [http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/wpa/wpahome.html]
Includes a rare interview by Hermond Norwood of former slave Fountain Hughes conducted in Baltimore, Maryland, June 11, 1949. Hughes was born in 1848.

4) "Been Here So Long": Selections from the WPA Slave Narratives. New Deal Network [http://newdeal.feri.org/asn/index.htm].
Selections from WPA narratives, bibliographies, links, and teaching guides.

Monday, October 25: Case Study: Recording the History of the Civil Rights Movement

Required Readings:

1) Studs Terkel, My American Century (New Press, 1998), 429-475.

2) William H. Chafe, "The Gods Bring Threads to Webs Begun," in The Journal of American History vol 86, no 4 (March 2000), 1531-1551.

3) Selections from The Civil Rights Documentation Project (http://www.usm.edu/crdp/). Read the interview with Gov. Ross Barnett. Look over the others. The USM Center for Oral History present 125 oral history transcripts on line focusing on the civil rights movement. Interviewees included civil rights leaders Charles Cobb, Charles Evers, Aaron Henry, and Hollis Watkins, as well as oral histories of governor Ross Barnett, national White Citizens Council leader William J. Simmons, and State Sovereignty head Erle Johnston. Source: McCain Library & Archives, University of Southern Mississippi.

Assignment: In a succinct 3-page essay, utilizing the assigned readings from last week and this week, discuss the major obstacles oral historians face when interviewing across racial, ethnic, gender, psychological, or ideological divides (focus on one "divide").

Monday, November 1: Case Study: Doctors and the AIDS Epidemic

Required Readings:

1) Ronald Bayer and Gerald M. Oppenheimer, AIDS Doctors: Voices from the Epidemic, an Oral History (Oxford University Press, 2002).

Assignment: Write a very short review essay (2 pages) on Ronald Bayer and Gerald M. Oppenheimer, AIDS Doctors.

Monday, November 8: Oral History as Public History ~ Radio Productions, Theater, Museum Exhibits, and More

Required Readings:

1) Donald A. Ritchie, Doing Oral History, pp. 222-245.

2) Perks and Thomson, eds., The Oral History Reader, pp. 414-420, 448-464.

3) Marty Pottenger, "CWT#3: Making City Water Tunnel #3," High Performance (Spring 1997), pp.2-10. [Electronic Reserve]

4) Della Pollock, "Telling the Told; Performing Like a Family," Oral History Review 18/2 (Fall 1990): 1-36. [Electronic Reserve]

Monday, November 15: Introduction to Videohistory, I

Required Readings:

1) Donald A. Ritchie, Doing Oral History, pp. 134-154..

2) Lynne S. Gross and Larry W. Ward, Electronic Moviemaking, 4th Edition (Wadsworth, 2000). Selections. [Electronic Reserve]

3) Perks and Thomson, eds., The Oral History Reader, pp. 379-388.

4) Terri A. Schorzman, ed., A Practical Inroduction to Videohistory: The Smithsonian Institution and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Experiment (Krieger, 1993). Selections. [Electronic Reserve]

5) Video/Audio Scene outline for Brian D. Mauriello's documentary, Which Way EJ? [Electronic Reserve]

Monday, November 22: Introduction to Videohistory, II

Required Readings (and viewing): [Several oral-history rich documentary film segments will be shown in class and discussed].

1) Sherna Berger Gluck, Rosie the Riveter Revisited: Women, the War, and Social Change. Selection. [Electronic Reserve]

2) Jesse Lemisch, "Students for a Democratic Society, Heroically Portrayed, Before the Inexplicable Fall: COnsensus History in a Left Film," Film and History 31 (March 2001). Also available on line at H-Labor.

3) Spike Lee interview on 4 Little Girls: http://www.industrycentral.net/director_interviews/SL01.HTM

4) The Fog of War (DVD -- available in local video rental shops and also at the bookstore, under my History 101 course).

5) Donald A. Ritchie, Doing Oral History, pp. 245-251.

Recommended WWW Sites:

1) Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocause Testimonies [http://www.library.yale.edu/testimonies/homepage.html].
A collection of over 4,100 videotaped interviews with witnesses and survivors of the Holocaust, the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies is part of Manuscripts and Archives, at Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University.

2) Smithsonian Oral and Video Collections [http://www.si.edu/archives/ihd/ihda.htm].
A guide to the vast oral and video history collections at the Smithsonian Institution.

Monday, November 29: Oral and Videohistory on the Web

Required Readings (and viewing):

1) Thomas Dublin and Melissa Doak, "Miner's Son, Miners' Photographer: The Life and Work of George Harvan," in The Journal for MultiMedia History 3 (2000).

2) Charles Hardy III and Alessandro Portelli, "Can Almost See the Lights of Home ~ A Field Trip to Harlan County, Kentucky," in The Journal for MultiMedia History 2 (1999).

3) Thomas J. Kriger, "The 1939 Dairy Farmers Union Milk Strike in Heuvelton and Canton, New York," in The Journal for MultiMedia History 1 (1998).

4) Telling Their Stories: Oral History of the Holocaust. [http://www.tellingstories.org/].

5) American Slave Narratives: An OnlineAnthology [http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/wpa/wpahome.html]

6) Perks and Thomson, eds., The Oral History Reader, pp. 421-431.

Recommended Readings:

1) Michael Frisch, "Oral History, Documentary, and the Mystification of Power: A Critique of Vietnam: A Television History," in Frisch's A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History (SUNY Press, 1990).

2) What did you do in the war, Grandma?
An Oral History of Rhode Island Women during World War II written by students in the Honors English Program at South Kingstown High School.. Go to: http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/WWII_Women/tocCS.html 

3) "Learning to Live Together in Good Times and Bad"
This Web site tells the story of Naomi Craig, a "church person and defense plant worker," as interviewed by Aileen Keenan.  This site includes a Real Audio presentation of the entire interview.  Go to: http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/WWII_Women/LearningToLiveTogether.html

4) The Whole World Was Watching: An Oral History of 1968
A joint project between SouthKingstown High School and Brown University's Scholarly Technology Group. The project was sponsored by the Rhode Island Committee for the Humanities and NetTech: the Northeast Regional Technology in Education Consortium. The resource contains transcripts, audio recordings, and edited stories of a series of interviews conducted in the spring of 1998.  Members of the Sophomore Class at SKHS interviewed Rhode Islanders about their recollections of the year 1968. Their stories, which include references to the Vietnam War, the struggle for Civil Rights, the Assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy as well as many more personal memories are a living history of one of the most tumultuous years in United States history.  The URL is:  http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/1968/

Portions of some of the following documentaries will be viewed in class:

* Joseph Dorman's, Arguing the World (1997).
* Spike Lee, 4 Little Girls (1998).
* Helen Garvy, Rebels with a Cause (2001).
* Judith Vecchione and WGBH, Vietnam, A Television History. 13-part documentary (1987).
* Connie Field's The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (1987).

Monday, December 6: Final Presentations

Final Papers and Projects are due on Monday, December 13.

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