Oral history in the digital age
Oral history started in archives, took off in academia in the 70s and 80s
Oral history is archival to its core
Individual research interviews get destroyed
But not true of oral history
Part of good oral history methodology is that interviews should go to archives
Intended for archives
Nothing you ever write will be as rich as those oral interviews
People bring in collections, we do interviews
That’s rare for an oral history program
Usually no formal relationship with the archives
We have access to resources that most programs don’t
Digital library has a whole content mgmt. system
ILSS? Huge grant for oral history in the digital age
Resource for any of us doing historical research/archival research
read this: http://ohda.matrix.msu.edu/2012/07/mapping/
represents a qualitative leap forward
moved from interpretation of 90s to digital era – major paradigm shift
ethnic study centers participate most set up not as a strict academic field
collections are never finished, new finding aids, upgrade of tech
has become a real burden at a time when archives have less $$
revisit what we already have as well as forward in time
Xiaomi: digital continuity plan?
Not just getting facts anymore, documenting the way people think about the past and the present
Trying to get more well-rounded views. More interested in the stories than how accurate they are
Try to compensate for what is lost, but you do lose when u put sthg in the archive
Field notes are very helpful
Shoah $60 million oral history project – biggest ever. Designed so the material could be used in other things . parts available to other organizations to use for other projects
Shoah indexed on a grand scale, more useful than transcirpts
Define the project before you start
Legal agreement
Form you record
Finding aids/access you create to those interviews
Public records requirements
Can embargo, but not limit access
Ethical issues
Shared authority – Frisch
Refers to the actual process of the intvw itself. The co-creation of meaning
Meaning is created as a shared process in an interview
Shred AUTHORity mutual creation of meaning
Interviewee always has their own historical vision of some kind
Portelli: “history-telling”
People are telling their stories in the ontext of a larger history
Oral history is different: indiv experience in historical context
Engage a person in a process of making historical sense of theur lives
Can’t get to an objective oral history. Not even desirable. What makes it valuable is the not-just-facts aspect. Always based on a exchange, a relationship
Definition has been extended beyond the interview
Shorthand of how the interview is used, how the community is a part of that
Ethical questions abt how much agency interviewees have
Shoah by Landsman – 8-9 hours. Interviews at various sites
He does some things that ppl criticize
Barber in a camp
Recreates the situation, and then starts interviewing him. They cut ppls hair before they went to the gas chambers. Couldn’t tell family goodbye bc the guard is right there. At one point the barber says he can’t do it, but Landsman really pushes him and then he does it. How ethical is that? Is that really a shared authority?
Kathleen Blay intvws on the KKK white women who were members of the Klan in
She didn’t challenge them. They assumed she agreed with them. She didn’t let them know her purpose. Published a good book on the subject. Implied contract where you try to be up front abt where stand. Don’t disguise your purposes. It’s her personal feeling. Don’t expect them to fundamentally misunderstand her objectives. Interviewing keeps you honest abt your source materials. Responsibility to your sources for honest/ethical portrayal. Recognize ppl are human beings and your criticism comes at a cost in a way.
Archival issues in oral history
Basic rule is that harm not come to the interviewee
M.T. maybe the person WANTS to face consequences of looking bad. Why is it for the interviewer to decide?
Disguise identities if the interviewees are in danger
Boston College Case
Faculty interviewed members of the IRA then promised that the interviews wouln’t be made available. But they were in a public institution and the interviews got released. Imperiled the interviewees in terms of safety and legally
The notion of informed consent/shared authority becomes very important in an archive. Legal agreements.
She relies a lot on what people want out there.
Someone who is being talked about who hasn’t given legal consent can present a problem.
Legal and ethical issues should be reported by the interviewer to the archive
Conerned with something showing up on a Google search
Work in Haiti: how well the interviewees would understand what informed consent really means
Khan
Frisch: history background, consulting, technology. How we can use technology to design oral history
Non-text-reliant digital index and search mechanisms will enable imaginative, unforeseen uses for oral history
Anne: Community informatics researchers haven’t yet dealt with affect
Relates to Yow article
Besser’s transgender living archive
A lot of the projects have profound effects on the archivists/researchers
Want to make that the theme of their next annual conference
Think about how to introduce thinking abt who you are yourselves when you go into communities, interview ppl with different backgrounds or even similar backgrounds where u might learn things that you took for granted/assumed
Psychologists on Shoah project to hdeal with how the indexing affected the indexers
My question to Anne, regarding student researchers working in the own communities/backgrounds
When researchers come from those communities as well as being in the university community
Spend a lot of time explaining themselves and their own stance
Self-reflexivity should be carried over to all researchers, not just the researchers who are not a part of the community being studied
Insider understands more of the nuances, but may gloss over things that seem apparent to her, but not to an outsider
Increasingly we have people who straddle both simultaneously
A of time thinking about oneself
Khan’s question: Act globally, but think locally or act locally but think globally
Anne’s answer: Archives tend to think very institutionally. Anne says they haven’t done either very well. Tend to think very institutionally and nationally, not locally, nor globally.
Stoler
Differences bt anthropologist’s analysis versus historian’s
Anthro is more ethnographic, abt capturing community dynamics within a networked system
Historians more abt the documents, facts
Oral histories done by different backgrounds are different?
Historians in US tend to be very empirical
Portelli is a literary theorist
Who cares if the stories are true? Enabled him to do some really interesting work.
Stoler gets at some of the standard oral history assumptions:
Looking for agency, narrative
Oral histprians have been very invested in getting the person’s story. The complete whole. Interested in rescuing histories. Stoler very affected by postmodernity, antithetical to how oral historians work, they focus on individual stories, whereas she goes after a bigger picture.
Typically centers around events. People already know what people want to hear abt them. The assumption is that youre in a space where you’re enabling people to speak freely. The skay footing of that enabling. Only enabled as much as it can be within that context.
Anne
People developed all sorts of grand theories based on their interactions
“we told her exactly what she wanted to hear”
I don’t think you have the right to hear that story
Is it part of the anthropological method to include what your interpretation is. They pay attention to other things
Historians listen and anthropologists watch.
Teresa
Historians are more process-oriented
Oral history is very narrative-based
Anne
The other piece of her work is to work with the documents across the grain. The is a second method. She reads the docs for how they say it, not what they say.
Power is the thing that is at work here.
Can you ever get around those power structures
My point:
The woman who wouldn’t speak with Stoler directly
She was asserting power
Lasting effects of colonialism that she didn’t trust
Blassingame
Could you tell from the piece that the author was African-american?
Anne thinks it’s tenor is remarkably neutral in that respect
Yale professor
The name can condition the audience
Javier brought up the example of women writing under pseudonyms
Teaching note:
That Teresa lady doesn’t know how to deal with questions. Can’t build on the question to tie in to her lecture. Anne is amazing at how she does this.
Bias in archives (WPA project)
Khan asks why narrative is better than interview
Anne:
Like Stoler, trying to read the archive to determine what hasn’t been recorded.
M.T.
Would it be inappropriate in an interview to ask the interviewee how they feel about an assumption that you’ve proven is wrong? For example, If Stoler had asked the people who described their relationships with the servants as loving, etc., that the former servants felt completely different, what would have transpired?
Teresa
Most problematic about WPA is that the interviews weren’t recording. So can’t go back a revisit the records, can only look at what the interviewers wrote about the interviews.
Morgan
Conventional racialized dialect
Wonder how much transcription was done based on how the interviewee sounded/spoke.
Anne
Diplomatics
The number of times the thing is removed from the original affects the trustworthiness of what’s in there declines over time.
