Margaret Block is interviewed by Paul Ortiz in Indianola, Mississippi, September 2008. (photo by Sarah Eiland)
Teaching Oral History
Oral History Seminars
Fall 2009
Dr. Robin Lauriault
Writing in Oral History
Writing in Oral History is an interdisciplinary course in which students are challenged to think about the relationships between community and history. We will do this by listening to the voices of people who have lived, experienced, and "made" local history.
Students will use the oral record to critique misconceptions and myths about rural life in North Florida and will gain experience in interviewing techniques, primary research, and especially in writing by keeping a field journal, transcribing interviews, and learning to integrate this material into a research paper.
Course info: ENC 3254, T 7/R 7-8, Weil 412
Writing in Oral History confers credit for both General Education Composition and the University Writing Requirement.
To register, contact Susan Ciccarone by e-mail (susancic@ufl.edu) with your ufid or by phone (846-1138).
Summer A 2009, AMH3931
Professor Paul Ortiz
American Communities: An Oral History Approach
In this seminar, we will learn the craft of oral history in order to examine the historical issues that shape the social and political fabric of the American South and elsewhere in the United States. In "American Communities," we do this by listening to--as well as reading and watching--the perspectives of people who have lived, experienced, and "made" this history firsthand.
This seminar is part of a larger research project that focuses on African American history in Alachua County, Florida, and the rest of the Deep South. We will conduct life history interviews with black elders in Gainesville’s African American communities, as well as others who played a significant role in the modern Civil Rights Movement. In our preparatory readings, we will focus on the African American freedom struggle from the end of Reconstruction to the contemporary era, focusing particularly on the decades of legal segregation. We will critically assess, through films, popular music, podcasts, readings, archival documents, speakers, and other sources, how major historical forces of social change--segregation, the Civil Rights Movement, changes in the economy, etc.--have affected the struggle for community and dignity in our contemporary world.
Students will gain experience in oral history fieldwork, using digital recording equipment, primary research, as well as transcribing and analyzing oral history research. We will also learn ways that oral history can be used in a variety of new electronic and text formats in order to build community and to improve literacy and writing skills. Students will have access to the resources of one of the premier oral history research centers in the nation, the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at UF.
Dr. Ortiz' Experience in Teaching Oral History
Dr. Ortiz co-taught the Introduction to Oral History Workshop at the Oral History Association annual meeting and taught oral history seminars at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and UC-Santa Cruz before coming to UF.
Dr. Ortiz taught his first university oral history seminar in 1996. The students in that class created a website that featured their interviews and primary research materials. This website demonstrates one way that a community-based oral history seminar can make its results accessible to a public audience.
Two of the students’ interviews from this 1996 seminar will appear in a forthcoming book by Lionel Bascom, Voices of the African American Experience to be published by Greenwood Press in 2009.
A graduate seminar typically teaches students how to use oral history in their doctoral dissertation and master’s research projects. It will also explore the emergence of oral history as a powerful research tool and an intellectual endeavor that has changed the way that we think about modern history. Dr. Ortiz taught the graduate oral history seminar at UC-Santa Cruz:
Community-based oral history is an approach to the field that emphasizes community involvement at all stages of the process, including background research, interviewing, and deciding how to use the interviews in public education projects. In recent years, this approach has produced some outstanding oral history media projects as well as books. Marjorie L. McLellan provides a wonderful overview of this method in her article: “Case Studies in Oral History and Community Learning,” which appears in the Oral History Review's Summer/Fall 1998 issue.
Overview of Workshops
- Paul Thompson
The Voices of the Past
SPOHP offers a limited number of one-day workshops and conferences to local groups, historical societies, libraries, and other interested parties. Workshops usually last about 4 hours. Contact Paul Ortiz to schedule a session: portiz@ufl.edu or 352-392-7168.
Topics covered:
- a definition of oral history and how it is used
- legal and ethical issues -
Deed of Gift pdf - transcribing and editing
- memory
- practical work
- question period
- project design, goals, and management
- what equipment to use and how to use it
- how to prepare questions and conduct an interview
- family history
