CUIN 6397 - Practicum in IT, Summer 2006
Oral History and Blog Assignment
In Class 4 (on June 20th), we will be participating in an oral history workshop. We would like you to be familiar with the concept of oral history before you come to class on the 20th. Please research the term "oral history" however you would like and post a comment that includes:
1. A definition of oral history
2. Answer the question: Who is the oral historian in your family or what personal experience you have with oral history? For example, Brian's personal experience with oral history was his grandma, who was a first generation immigrant from Lithuania who could not read or write english. Her contribution to the family's legacy was many stories of the struggles she went through and how there was once a town in Lithuania that was the origin of the Plankis family name and it was a thriving town until Germany invaded in 1915 in WWI and razed it to the ground.
3. One or more of the following:
Links to additional resources (such as websites, titles of books, movies, journal articles, etc.) that you found describing oral history that other people can examine.
Before you post your comment on the blog, be sure to read other people's comments to make sure you are not posting a duplicate resource.
Oral History and Blog Assignment
In Class 4 (on June 20th), we will be participating in an oral history workshop. We would like you to be familiar with the concept of oral history before you come to class on the 20th. Please research the term "oral history" however you would like and post a comment that includes:
1. A definition of oral history
2. Answer the question: Who is the oral historian in your family or what personal experience you have with oral history? For example, Brian's personal experience with oral history was his grandma, who was a first generation immigrant from Lithuania who could not read or write english. Her contribution to the family's legacy was many stories of the struggles she went through and how there was once a town in Lithuania that was the origin of the Plankis family name and it was a thriving town until Germany invaded in 1915 in WWI and razed it to the ground.
3. One or more of the following:
Links to additional resources (such as websites, titles of books, movies, journal articles, etc.) that you found describing oral history that other people can examine.
Before you post your comment on the blog, be sure to read other people's comments to make sure you are not posting a duplicate resource.
posted by Bernard Robin @ 7:14 AM
16 comments
16 Comments:
has the preview problem on pachy been fixed yet?
Thanks for setting this up!:-)
Then, I do not have to create another blog account. I just need to use my account after I write my comment.
Finally I understand.
I think you should change the template so we can read it easier
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
1) Oral history documents forms of discourse normally not documented and it emphasizes the significance of human experience (Retrieved from http://www.thc.state.tx.us/publications/guidelines/OralHistory.pdf)
2)The oral historian in my family was my grandma. She was a great storyteller not only of family life but of life in general. Since she passed away, my aunt Jan has become our family oral historian. In the future, I think I will become the family oral historian because I also like to tell family stories so that they may be kept alive.
)Some reference links:
http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/oral.htm
--This links to the U.S. army's Center of Military History. The section on oral histories of soldiers is especially interesting.
http://memory.loc.gov/learn/lessons/oralhist/ohhome.html
--This links to a lesson plan from the Library of Congress American Memory site which might be helpful to the teacher's guide group in developing lesson plans.
Oral history is the collection of personal memoirs and recodings of personal accounts, as historical documents. Unlike more reliable primary documents, dates may be fuzzy with oral history artifacts but you get a rich description of what it was really like to live during a certain time period and how events affected your source/contributor - history from an experiential perspective.
The oral historian in my family is my Aunt Mary, the oldest of my mother's 3 sisters. Although my mother often questions her account of events (my mother was the youngest) she still provides great anecdotal pieces that keep me in awe and in stitches.From her I have learned that my grandmother made one of the first frozen desserts for a man for whom she worked as a maid, who was out of town on business but really wanted a piece of her strawberry rhubarb pie so she froze it and mailed it to him. I also learned that many in my family were chefs, horse trainers and educators. And, I learned a lot about my dad who was killed when I was just 2 years old so Aunt Mary is always my source for family information. She also is good for family dirt - she told me that my 2 great uncles were cross-dressers and won several beauty and dance contests. It doesn't get richer than that!
Dr. Robin - How do I respond to Anne's posting?
Anne - start tape recording. We always think we have plenty of time or that we will remember the stories.
Judi,
Thanks for the tip. Good idea about tape recording.
I love the comment about your uncles, hilarious!
1. According to one of Dr. Robin’s good friends and now one of mine as well, Wikipedia defines oral history an account of something passed down by word of mouth from one generation to another.
2. The oral historian in my family was my maternal grandmother. What a storyteller she was; you just never knew what was going to come out of her mouth. And if she didn’t have something important to say, well I swear I believe she just made stories up to keep us in stitches. There are a couple of factual things that I remember her sharing with us. 1. She explained how she used to have to pick cotton and how her hands would bleed. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what that must have been like. Ironically, my family ended up moving to Lubbock, Texas, a major producer of cotton and once I touched the cotton plant I had a much better understanding. 2. She also shared about the family losing all but the shirts on their backs when the Trinity River in Ft. Worth flooded. They escaped by wading through chest deep water for my grandmother and waste deep water for my grandfather. Thank goodness he was so tall and strong because he had to carry my mother (age 6) and her younger brother (age 4) to safety as well.
Now that my grandmother is no longer with us, my mother relays stories about our family to us. I have two younger sisters and there are certain things that each of us seems to recall. I hope that one day we will take the time to record some of these memories for generations to come.
3. History Matters-
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/oral/online.html
This site has links to exemplary oral history sites as well as links to oral history guides.
Digital Rights in Mississippi – Digital Archive
http://www.lib.usm.edu/~spcol/crda/index.html
University of Southern Mississippi’s Libraries and Center for Oral Histories developed a site that offers a fully searchable database of digitized versions of rare and unique library and archival resources related to race relations in Mississippi. We might be able to use portions of this site as a model as we seek to build the PRH site.
Global Nomads – fostering dialogue and understanding among the world’s youth
http://www.gng.org/
Although this resource might be stretching the concept of oral history a little, Global Nomads is dedicated to heightening children's understanding and appreciation for the world and its people.
They use interactive technologies such as videoconferencing, to bring young people together face-to-face to meet across cultural and national boundaries to discuss their differences & similarities, and the world issues that affect them.
1. Oral history-compilation of historical data through interviews, usually tape-recorded and sometimes videotaped, with participants in, or observers of, significant events or times.
See S. Caunce, Oral History (1994); V. R. Yow, Recording Oral History (1994), R. Perks and A. Thomson, The Oral History Reader (repr. 1998).
2. My father is the oral historian in my family. He has kept a mental road map of my family's history- never ignoring a detail. Dinner time is the favor hour(s) of detailing the past. The stories detail his life growing up and also the histories and stories of his parents and grandparents.
3. http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/oh/
This links to the National Park Service's oral history page. There are many additional sources for oral histories on this page as well as the National Park Service covers a vast amount of information.
Oral history is a valuable evident tool for exploring topics such as the role and experience of blacks. Recorded oral testimony based on human memory and experience
From the Dictionary: MSN Encarta.
Definition:
1. history recorded by participants in events: the personal recollections of people who participated in historical events, recorded on audio or video tape or told to a younger generation
2. written history based on interviews: a written work of history based on interviews with or recordings of participants
3. study of history recorded orally: the branch of history that deals with personal accounts of historical events or periods recorded on audio or video tape
2.
This was the best source I could find: http://www.bergen.org/OurStory/resources.html
3.
The oral history in my family came from one interesting source: my great uncle, who was partially insane but a great story teller. Much of what he told us was twisted but had many elements of truth in them. He could remember things about my dad that even he had forgotten. He told us how he could hide my dad because his father did not want him to go to school but to work on the family farm. He related his accounts of fights that he was involved in and how he always worn. Most importantly, how he was a ladies man who has never been married ‘til today.
I found two definitions of oral history:
From www.smu.edu/anthro/collections/glossary2.html Verbally transmitted information about past events. Although often providing information about non-written events, such history is subject to the vagaries of human perceptions and mental recall.
From osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/archives/handbook/definitions/ The audio recording or transcript which results from planned oral interviews with individuals. These created and preserved interviews are intended for use by researchers and historians.
It is interesting that one definition only mentions verbal, the other mentions actually recording the material. So if our oral historians in our family are not recorded, are they really oral historians?
I already related my experience about my Grandma
My links:
http://oralhistory.rutgers.edu/
This was my favorite link, lots of stories about war veterans from WWII up to Vietnam and beyond. Some people were obviously bad interviews, others were great. All of them are written transcripts though, no audio or video.
http://www.dohistory.org/on_your_own/toolkit/oralHistory.html
This is a nice link that has a LOT of information on how to do oral history and an extensive list of resources.
1.) Oral History is a compilation of historical data through interviews, usually tapoerecorded and sometimes videotapes, with participants in, or observers of significant events or times.
From: www.encyclopedia.com
2.) A oral historian in my family would be my parents and both my grandmothers. I have heard tons and tons of family stories and stories of things that happened around the world, told through their eyes. Like the story I am often told by my dad about how his mom came a got him from a party in her night gown and hair rollers because he didn't call home at his curfew. I will hopefully one day when I am older become an oral historian, because I enjoy telling stories about a variety of things to other people, weather its about family, or the government.
3.) "Making Sense of Oral History" by: Linda Shopes. http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/oral/
http://www.ohs.org.uk/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_history
According to what I have read, oral history is the historical information recollected formally, informally, in printing or recorded from the personal memoirs of those who eyewitnesses the events in question. Its goal is to recollect such events of the past from a perspective that includes human experience, thus history can be seen through the eyes of the eyewitnesses of such events. It also permits to see the impact of those events in the past and present of those who eyewitnessed them.
The oral historian in my family is my grandmother who lives in Oruro Bolivia which is the city where her grandparents, parents, civilings, children, and most of her children were born. Oruro used to be one of the most important and thriving cities in my country because it had many silver mines that supported a great part of the nation economy. However at some point the price of silver went down, some mines closed and most of the people emigrated. So, she is the one who keeps the legacy of how prosperous and great that city was, and how important it was for my country.
Some resources to find information about oral history are:
http://oralhistory.rutgers.edu/
http://www.ucc.uconn.edu/~cohadm01/
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/oral/what.html
http://www.dohistory.org/on_your_own/toolkit/oralHistory.html
http://www.dickinson.edu/oha/
http://www.ohs.org.uk/
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