Your Custom Text Here
Three generations of the Cahana family, sharing their creative gifts along with their tragedy.
By Lisa R. Cohen
A conversation with oral historian Indira Chowdury, Oral History and “the Keepers of Memory”: Knowledge of Past Times in Cultures of Orality in India, explored the role of art and creativity to bring the past into the present. Lisa R. Cohen looks at three generations of artists who provide a through line to preserving memories, culture and identity taking their own unique creative paths.
Read More
We are proud to announce that our 2020-2021 OHMA Research Grants have been awarded to current students Taylor Thompson (2020), Liú Chen (2019), and Jennie Morrison (2019). These students will be using the funding to compensate narrators and collaborators, develop websites, and process interviews. You will be able to hear more about their exciting work in upcoming blog posts.
Taylor Thompson
Taylor Thompson is collecting and archiving the narratives of community care organizers in New York City towards a study in liberatory economic models and economic imaginations.The aim of the work is to preserve and promote stories of community care and mutual-aid. An important aspect of community care work and accountable scholarship is solidarity; this grant will help Taylor provide honorariums for her narrators' time and critical storytelling.
Liú Chen
Liú (they/them) is currently living on occupied Lenape territory, also known as New York City, with their service dog, Desmond. They are working on their OHMA thesis about family storytelling and communication in East Asian American families, and also serve as an oral history intern at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture.
Jennie Morrison
Jennie Morrison will explore the intersections of oral history and social work approaches to listening and social change by facilitating an Oral History 101 training for social workers. Jennie is trained as a social worker, and is particularly passionate about working with children, youth, and families.
This fall brought a treasure trove of workshops that introduced us to oral history projects telling the histories of marginalized communities in their own words - from Rikers’ Island inmates to New York City’s Trans community. A new documentary seeks to do the same, directed by a collaborative team that partners subject with producer. OHMA student Lisa R. Cohen spoke to the team about their very special relationship.
Read More
Inspired by recent OHMA Workshops that explored personal experiences of how our “homes” change over time - Sara Sinclair and Suzanne Methot’s How We Go Home: Voices from Indigenous North America, and Sarita Daftary’s on the East New York Oral History Project and the Rikers Public Memory Project – Michael Giannetti decided to conduct a listening activity with his family about their memories of Detroit, the 1967 uprising, and their contemporary ideas of the city.
Read More
After Michelle O’Brien’s workshop on the NYC Trans Oral History Project, OHMA student and librarian Kae Bara Kratcha wondered whether the material needs of all trans people will ever be met well enough that all trans people who want to could spend most of their time learning and teaching their histories. To explore this question, Kae wrote and recorded a poem and created a video to accompany the recording.
Read More
How I learned to stop worrying and love Zoom, live theatre, and talking on the telephone; and what they all taught me about in-person interviews. (Remember those?)
By: Casey Dooley
Read More
Elena Aguilar, an educator, shares a drawing, made by a Laotian boy, depicting his experience during the U.S. government’s secret bombing campaign of Laos. From 1964 to 1973, more than two million tons of bombs hit Laos causing countless villages and lives to be destroyed. [1]
How should educators navigate controversial issues like war in their lesson plans? Current OHMA student and veterans’ oral historian Elizabeth Jefimova offers a few tips for educators looking to incorporate the topic of war into their curriculum and how oral history methodology provides a unique solution in teaching war.
Read More![[ - a grid displays images of a body in motion - ]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/50d0a18de4b07abde41656e7/1608597314431-Z7O2YLKJOYXLQZNPS0PE/Brandon.jpg)
Brandon Perdomo writes about testimony in relation to the body and response to social-scape by activation-of-voice in response to a presentation by both Sara Sinclair on her work on How We Go Home, and Suzanne Methot, who complements the piece with curriculum-building for Voice Of Witness.
Read More
Two thought experiments emerged in response to Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s presentation at OHMA on November 12, 2020. They take the form of a diptych collage titled “Reach for the Moon or The Grass is Always Greener”.
Read More
Sean Dorsey, the first acclaimed transgender contemporary dance choreographer in the US, created a trilogy of full-length dance-theater works based on the oral history interviews he conducted. Then, how did Sean turn narratives into dances? What’s his creative process? The answer is in this blog post.
Read MoreIn response to Sean Dorsey’s talk “Dancing with THE MISSING GENERATION: centering trans oral histories”, current OHMA student Nora Waters considers ways of building intersubjective containers with room for more than two.
Read MoreIn this blog post, OHMA student Brad Bailey reflects on the intersection of film, art, community engagement, and representation.
Read MoreIn this post, current OHMA student Nora Waters explores the inherent creative practice of the encounter, whether it be lithography or an interview, after discovering that she has lived much of her life as a maker without a medium.
Read More
Simone Forti, Slant Board, 1961. Photo courtesy of artist.
In this post, OHMA student Dian Zi (2018) reflects on how oral history collects details of the organic truth of a public figure’s life through Mary Marshall Clark and Sara Sinclair’s presentation on the Robert Rauschenberg Oral History Project.
Read More
Simone Forti, Slant Board, 1961. Photo courtesy of artist.
Current OHMA student Kyna Patel (cohort of 2017) reflects upon the challenges and collaborative nature of oral history highlighted by Sara Sinclair and Mary Marshall Clark in the Robert Rauschenberg Oral History Project.
Read More
Robert Rauschenberg hunting and gathering in Captiva. Courtesy of The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.
In this post, OHMA student Holly Werner-Thomas (2017) considers the similarities and differences between the oral history biography and the traditional authored biography, and how Robert Rauschenberg's own spirit of collaboration is reflected in the Robert Rauschenberg Oral History Project.
Read MoreWe are excited to share a round of spring news updates from our Oral History MA program alumni community!
Read More
OHMA alums Erica Fugger and Cameron Vanderscoff with Centre for Public History staff and director Indira Chowdhury in Bangaluru, India.
To close out the year, OHMA is excited to share these recent news updates about our students and alumni. We hope that you will be able to join us for our Spring Open House on January 26 and One-Day Oral History Training Workshops on January 28, 2017 to meet a number of our program affiliates—including Nicki Pombier Berger (2010) and Fernanda Espinosa (2015)—and learn more about their innovative work!
Read More
