Fall 2021 - Spring 2022 | Oral History and Power
Oral histories are always created within the context of power relations, and oral historians think critically about the power dynamics that shape their work. Oral history processes can also be used to produce individual and collective power or to challenge oppressive power dynamics. In this public programming series, we will explore the interrelationships of oral history and power, from the use of oral history as part of community organizing to the complex negotiations of power within the field of oral history and within the oral history encounter.
Thursday Evening Event Series
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Thursday Evening Event Series 〰️
Fall 2020
September 24, 2020, 6-8:00pm
1 or 2 Things to Consider When Staging Oral Histories of Black and Brown Trauma
ONLINE with Nikki Yeboah
The (M)others is an oral history performance that explores the stories of four women brought together by the unimaginable experience of losing a loved one to police violence. Workshop attendees are invited to witness a Zoom production of The (M)others and join Nikki for a talkback about the project, her process, and black feminist methods for staging racial trauma.
October 8, 2020, 6-8:00pm
Capturing Narratives of Displacement, Divestment, and Dehumanization
ONLINE with Sarita Daftary
In this session, Sarita Daftary will discuss her work on the East New York Oral History Project and the Rikers Public Memory Project. The Rikers Public Memory Project is a community-based, participatory initiative through which our collective stories about the impact of Rikers are activated to envision a more just NYC and initiate a community truth and healing process. Sarita will discuss these projects in the context of building power to challenge dominant narratives about Black communities, about wealth, and about people who have been incarcerated.
November 5, 2020, 1-4:00 pm
Empowering Youth Through Indigenous Stories
ONLINE with Sara Sinclair and Suzanne Methot
This workshop will explore how oral history can form the foundation of educational materials designed to challenge oppressive power dynamics. We will explore how the book’s narratives and accompanying curriculum can return the power of the stories to Indigenous youth through teaching materials that are designed to amplify Indigenous voices and embrace Indigenous determinants of educational success.
November 12, 2020, 6-8:00pm
Noopiming: The Cure For White Ladies
ONLINE with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Weaving story, song and film, Leanne explores the orality of her new work Noopiming: The Cure For White Ladies, published this fall by the House of Anansi Press, and forthcoming in the US in the Winter of 2020 from the University of Minnesota Press. The novel combines narrative and poetic fragments through a careful and fierce reclamation of Anishinaabe aesthetics.
Photograph is an image of Prof. Baik’s mother who grew up during the Park Chung-hee military dictatorship era in Korea.
November 19, 2020, 6-8:00pm
“The War Is Not A Bomber Jet Anymore”: Reencountering the Korean War through Aural History
ONLINE with Crystal Baik and Nodutdol
What does it mean to live with a 70-year war when its manifestations, hypervisible and deeply sensed, are perceived as everyday formations delinked from militarized violence and state brutality? Professor Crystal Mun-hye Baik and members of Nodutdol for Korean Community Development address this question by discussing the Intergenerational Korean American Oral History Project, a diasporic memory archive that encompasses contested stories of dispossession, militarized migration, and fraught relationships anchored in the un-ended Korean War.
December 2, 2021, 7-8:30pm
The NYC Trans Oral History Project and Rethinking Oral History Methodology
ONLINE with Michelle O’Brien
The NYC Trans Oral History Project (NYC TOHP) is a vibrant, growing online archive of 200 interviews with trans New Yorkers sharing their life stories. In this presentation, Michelle will outline the work of NYC TOHP, and explain the rationale for these unusual choices, and how they contribute to making the interviews useable by trans communities themselves.
Spring 2021
February 18, 2021, 6:10-7:30pm
Land Back! The Importance of Oral History in First Nation Land Claims Cases
With Winona Wheeler
This workshop will explore the role that Indigenous oral histories play in land claims cases from the perspective of a land claims researcher.
February 25, 2021, 6:10-7:30pm
Changing the Narrative on Gun Violence: Survivors Want You to ‘Sit Down and Listen’
With Holly Werner-Thomas
Holly Werner-Thomas centers the life stories of people directly affected by gun violence. In this session, Holly will discuss how their personal testimony challenges dominant narratives about crime and safety – narratives that drive current policy – and her own efforts towards amplifying their too-often-ignored voices.
March 11, 2021, 6:10-7:30pm
Documenting State Violence, Building Archives of Survival
With Gabriel Solis
This workshop reframes archives of violence as archives of survival, which hold a multidimensional and multidirectional power to transform people, beliefs, and cultures in the context of the work of the Texas After Violence Project.
March 18, 2021, 6:10-7:30pm
Editing for the Mass Market: Tips and Tidbits from the Queens Night Market Vendor Stories Oral History Project
With Storm Garner
In this event, Storm will discuss the ins and outs, boons and pitfalls of her collaborations with editors, producers, narrators and journalists on public-facing, mass-media works derived from recent oral histories, hoping to encourage more oral historians to dare to play to a larger audience, while remaining wary of likely constraints. Participants will have an opportunity to try some writing and editing exercises from Storm’s projects and compare notes as a group.
April 8, 2021, 6:10-7:30pm
Deaf NYC Spaces and Stories
With Brian H. Greenwald and Brianna DiGiovanni
What communities are overlooked in oral history practice, and in history-making more broadly?Using their Deaf NYC project as a case study, Brian Greenwald and collaborators from Gallaudet University will share what they have learned about how to make bilingual and dual-model interviews accessible for everybody, including insights about doing video and visual history and working with translation that resonate with core questions in the field of oral history today.
May 20, 2021, 6-7:30pm
Performing Black Queer History in Baltimore’s “Cathedral of Books”
With Joseph Plaster
Joseph Plaster discusses the role of oral history in developing and launching the Peabody Ballroom Experience, a public humanities collaboration between Johns Hopkins University and the Baltimore artists who make up ballroom, a countercultural provocation of fashion, dance, and performance created by queer and transgender people of color.
Find more Events with OHMA
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Find more Events with OHMA 〰️