What does a giant underground vault near the North Pole have in common with an oral history collection? More than you think, Ellen Coon explains.
Read MoreBanking Our Future
A worker straddles two rows of seeds in the vault near the North Pole
Pyakhan, Zar and Possessions
Figure Drawing: Possession by Nairy AbdElShafy
In their reaction to possessions Nepal and Egypt are very different. Their religious and cultural interpretations influence Pyakhan; the masked dance-drama performed in Nepal and the Zar exorcism ritual performed in Egypt. Current OHMA student Nairy AbdElShafy reflects on Ellen Coon’s talk on The Mountain with Two Wives: Landscape and Embodied Memory in Kathmandu on March 7th, and our role as oral historians in documenting experiences of possessions.
Read MoreSounds as Language, Language as Sounds
Image Description: In this photo, Nishani Frazier starts her presentation with music that is essential to the identities from her hometown. It captures one of the exciting moments from the workshop, in which Frazier enlightens her audience with captivating music and sounds to make a point of her presentation.
“Listen to the world around you!” What do you hear? What sounds do you notice? Dr. Nishani Frazier’s presentation reminds us the importance of sounds in oral history. Music theory and philosophy teach us to value sounds that are linked with places, people, cultures, and languages.
Read MoreDear Green Place: Gentrification and Displacement in Glasgow’s West End
3,636 miles. That’s how far Glasgow, Scotland and Durham, North Carolina are apart from each other. Current OHMA student Rebecca McGilveray reflects on Nishani Frazier’s recent workshop and one of the things that unites these two places – the issues surrounding displacement.
Read MoreTelling Histories: Aurality in the Classroom and in the Streets
Nishani Frazier, educator, black freedom scholar, and someone unafraid to turn oral history practices on their head, recently returned to Columbia (where she earned her PhD) to discuss "The Sounds of Blackness: Space and Sound Preservation as Oral History Advocacy."
Read MoreFollowing Your Gut
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 MoreEmbodied Storytelling is Not New
For thousands of years Indigenous Pacific cultures have integrated oral traditions and dance. Kim-Hee Wong shares her experiences of practicing hula, Hawaiian dance, in response to a presentation by Sean Dorsey in the 2018-2019 OHMA workshop series, Oral History and the Future: Archives and Embodied Memory.
Read MoreAn Invitation to the Intersubjective Exchange
In 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 MoreReview: “The B-Side: ‘Negro Folklore From Texas State Prisons’ A Record Album Interpretation"
In this post, OHMA alum Bud Kliment reviews “The B-Side: ‘Negro Folklore From Texas State Prisons’ A Record Album Interpretation” a performance piece of musical theater and oral history based on the 1965 LP “Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons.”
Read MoreReflections on the 2018 Oral History Association Annual Meeting
In this post, OHMA alumni and recipient of our alumni travel grant Lynn Lewis reflects on her experience presenting at the 2018 Oral History Association annual meeting in Montreal. The 2019 call for papers is now open!
Engaging and transforming the spaces around us…...
In this blog post, OHMA student Brad Bailey reflects on the intersection of film, art, community engagement, and representation.
Read MoreWikimedia to the Rescue? How Wikipedia’s Crowdsourcing Model Could Catalyze the Field of Oral History.
Can the Wikimedia platform, tools and model help solve Oral History’s biggest problem - transcribing and digitizing the overwhelming number of unprocessed oral histories sitting in vaults around the world? Current Oral History MA student & Wikipedia Fellow (and Columbia’s first ever Wikimedian-In-Residence) Darold Cuba explores this possibility in a reflection of a Nov. 1, 2018 talk presented by Doug Boyd in the 2018 - 2019 OHMA workshop series, Oral History and the Future: Archives and Embodied Memory.
Read MoreTalking Knots: Decolonizing Oral History through Alternative Methods of Memory Transmission
In this blog post, OHMA student Caroline Cunfer reflects on colonized ideas of history and record-keeping, and how as oral historians we can reconsider and expand our processes of memory transmission to engage in ways that are natural and meaningful to the communities we are working with.
Read MoreArt and Art-making: The Meticulous Presence of the Encounter
In 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 MoreAnnouncing GSAS/OHMA Student Research Grant Recipients
Photo by Benji de la Piedra
Join us in celebrating the recipients of the GSAS/OHMA Student Research Grants!
Read MoreTo Curate, Or Not To Curate, That is the Question
On a visit to Columbia University, author and scholar Sujatha Fernandes explored the effects of manipulating storytelling in order to achieve desired results. In this article, OHMA student Renaldo McClinton will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of curating stories through social media and other digital platforms.
Read MoreFall 2018 Student and Alumni News
As we wrap up the 2018-2019 school year, please join us in celebrating the news and accomplishments of our students and alums!
Read MoreA New Dawn: Eric Marcus’s Why Suicide & Oral History’s Healing Process
In this post, based on Eric Marcus’s presentation, current Oral History MA student Lizzie Li discusses suicide loss and oral history’s healing process.
Read MoreGDPR and the future of OHMS: A Scottish Perspective
In this post, current OHMA student Rebecca McGilveray explores the future of OHMS in the context of Scotland after Doug Boyd’s recent workshop, “Accelerating Change, Oral History, Innovation and Impact.”
Read MoreThe Synchronizer and the Sexatron
Eileen Welsome, a journalist and author, is a first-year OHMA student who in this post examines how a digital innovation at the University of Kentucky’s Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History is making oral histories more accessible.
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