In this piece, current OHMA student Rebecca Kiil reflects on her role as oral historian in relationship to her narrators, after attending Maria Cotera’s recent talk, “Pan Dulce”— the first in Columbia University Oral History Master of Arts (OHMA’s) Fall 2018 workshop series: Oral History and the Future: Archives and Embodied Memory.
Read MoreNot Only Robert Rauschenberg, But Also Bob
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 MoreMy Time Working with the Tenement Museum
“Perfect Strangers” by Vik Muniz. Muniz wanted to show normal people you see on the subway that you remember distinctly, but regard as a stranger. This image of a couple is said to be the first permanent LGBT public art in all of New York. It is located at 72nd Street Station.
In this post, Desmond Austin-Miller, a graduate of Columbia University’s Oral History MA Program describes lessons learned through his time interning at the Tenement Museum during the Fall of 2017 and Spring of 2018.
Read MoreA Race Stenographer: On Being The Unwilling Representative
In this piece Alissa Funderburk discusses a challenge faced by writers of color as proposed by author and radio journalist Daniel Alarcón in his March 8th talk How to Listen, part of the OHMA workshop series, Oral History and the Arts.
Read MoreThe Performance of the Oral History Interview
On April 5th, Nicki Pombier Berger and Liza Zapol delighted us with an interactive, participatory workshop on creativity and the interview. In this blog post, Shira Hudson reflects on the relationship between the interviewer, narrator, and audience and how oral history can be viewed as performative.
Read MoreLook before You Leap: Project Design, the Interview, and Collaboration
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 MoreWhat Do We Mean By Listening?
Image Source: Concordia University
In this post OHMA student elly kalfus (2017) interrogates Luis C. Sotelo’s efforts to get people to position themselves in another’s story through audio walks.
Read MoreThe Art of Ceding Our Narrators the Power to Change our Lives
Image Source: Daniel Alarcon
Daniel Alarcon is a guide, leading us into rich, intimate places that remain in our memory long after he shares them. It isn’t only the beautifully written stories that he tells, or his truth that is to be found within them. It is his ability to listen to and to convey the humanity of the people in his stories that inspired my own connection to them
Read MoreHave you fasted from words today?
Image Source: Unsplash / Jonathan Pielmayer
In this post, current OHMA student Yiyi Zhang reflects on the power of listening through Luis Sotelo’s talk on Performing Listening in the Context of Memorial Audio Walks.
Luis C. Sotelo Castro is Canada Research Chair in Oral History Performance and Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre at Concordia University, Montreal (Quebec, Canada). In his current creation-research, he investigates modes of listening in the context of oral history performance and, more broadly, in the context of performances of memory.
Read MoreFeminism Through Time: Writing about Historical Movements using Oral History Interviews
Photograph via The Hollywood Reporter
In this post, OHMA student Samantha Lombard (2018) reflects on Jennifer Egan’s Workshop, Jennifer Egan: The Novelist As Oral Historian, in which she discussed, among other topics, the challenges of writing about feminism from a historical perspective using oral history interviews.
Read MoreA Pot of Soup
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 MoreDon’t Say It! (Wisdoms): A Conversation with Nyssa Chow
Photo from Nyssa Chow’s Still.Life. 2017 Exhibition, by Elyse Blennerhassett
Current OHMA student Carlin Zia shares gems from a warm-up conversation with Nyssa Chow ahead of her public presentation, “Writing and Listening for the Intersubjective Encounter,” the second event in our spring Oral History & the Arts lineup.
Read MoreComing Home: Finding One's Self in Oral History
Nyssa Chow, alum and OHMA teaching fellow, presents on her latest work, Still.Life., an oral history project documenting the lives of the women in her family. She spoke on her experience in the U.S. as an immigrant of color and the different perceptions of skin tone here and in Trinidad.
Read MoreHow can collective memory documented with oral history be the raw material for artistic production?
In this post, OHMA student Yameng Xia (2017) considers Jennifer Egan’s work Manhattan Beach and the interviews Egan conducted for the book. Jennifer Egan is a Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction writer and she came to Columbia University to give a public interview on how she used an oral history approach to get raw material for her new novel, Manhattan Beach.
Read MoreThe Sound of Frogs & The Smell of Nutmeg: A Journey into Memory
OHMA student Tomoko Kubota reflects on Nyssa Chow’s contribution to the Spring Workshop Series, "Writing and Listening for the Intersubjective Encounter."
Read MoreFrom James Michener to Jennifer Egan: The Evolving Use of Oral History in Writing Fiction
In this post, OHMA student Filip Mazurczak compares the methods of research used by Jennifer Egan and James Michener in writing historical fiction.
Read MoreMusic, Oral History, and the Self: A Look into Julia Wolfe’s Anthracite Fields
Image taken by Chris Lee for the Krannert Center
Current OHMA student Kyna Patel (2017 cohort) reflects on the historical and political themes in composer Julia Wolfe’s Anthracite Fields, as well as her personal connection with her work.
Read MoreThe Story is in the Strings
Copyright Peter Serling 2009
Julia Wolfe came to Columbia University to speak on December 7, 2017, and was interviewed live by Bud Kliment as part of the Workshop Series: Oral History and the Arts. Among other things, she spoke about her 2009 musical composition Steel Hammer that was based on the tale of John Henry and her 2014 musical composition Anthracite Fields that was a tribute to the Pennsylvania anthracite coal miners and their families.
Read MoreMichael Roberson and Ballroom Culture
OHMA student Desmond Austin-Miller reflects on Michael Roberson’s contribution to the Fall Workshop Series, A History of Echoes, Pt. 2: Sound of Trans Freedom and the influence Roberson left on him as a Black academic.
Read MoreMusic lesson: notes on doing a public interview
Bud Kliment, a part-time OHMA student, reflects on his recent conversation with composer Julia Wolfe, and some of the challenges (and benefits) of conducting a public interview.
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