Oral History Summer Institute 2000

This year's program focused on the ways in which culture and individuals remember traumatic historical events, exploring the tensions between history and memory as well as the differences between individual and social memory. Particular attention was paid to ways in which culture and identity help structure memory of traumatic events, placing those events in a larger context of struggle. For the first week we looked specifically at how to conceptualize and develop projects focusing on traumatic historical events and memories of struggle. During the second week we looked at ways those events and the subjective experiences of struggle are represented and interpreted in oral, visual and written texts.

FACULTY

Alan Berliner is an internationally acclaimed, award-winning independent filmmaker whose works include, among many others, Family Album and Nobody’s Business. Mr. Berliner has appeared at the Oral History Research Summer Institute numerous times, and premiered a work-in-progress this year.

Mary Marshall Clarkis the Associate Director of the Oral History Research Office at Columbia University. She recently completed a filmed presentation of oral history: Voices from South Africa: Excerpts from the Carnegie Corporation Oral History Project. She is vice-president elect of the Oral History Association.

Jean Carlomusto has created numerous videotapes about HIV-AIDS over the last fourteen years. In 1987 she founded the media production unit at the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. She co-chairs the Interactive Multimedia Arts Program at Long Island University.

Ann Cvetkovich is Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas, Austin. She is currently a Rockefeller Fellow at the Oral History Research Office. She is author of Mixed Feelings: Feminism, Mass Culture, and Victorian Sensationalism. She will be presenting work in progress from her forthcoming book, Trauma, Sexuality and Lesbian Public Cultures.

Yaffa Eliach, professor at the Department of Judaic Studies at Brooklyn College, is a pioneering scholar in Holocaust studies, and the creator of the Tower of Life at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Professor Eliach is author of many books, among them There Once Was a World: A 900-Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok, a nonfiction finalist for the National Book Award.

Ronald J. Grele is the Director of the Oral History Research Office. He is author of Envelopes of Sound: The Art of Oral History as well as numerous articles on the theory and method of oral history. He is past president of the Oral History Association, and lectures widely on the theory and use of oral history.

Karen Malpede is a New York City-based playwright, who has authored eleven plays, many of them dealing explicitly with the themes of trauma and memory. She holds an MFA from Columbia School of the Arts, has won a McKnight National Fellowship, and is a graduate of the New York University International Trauma Studies Program.

Alessandro Portelli is Professor of American Literature at the University of Rome. He is author of The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History, The Battle of Valle Guila: Oral History and the Art of Dialogue and, most recently, L’ordine e gia stato eseguito. Roma, le Fosse Ardeatine, la memoria which was awarded the Viareggio Book Prize for best work in the nonfiction category in Italy.

Kim Lacy Rogers is professor of history at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. She is co-editor, with Eva N. McMahan, of Interactive Oral History Interviewing, and author of Righteous Lives: Narratives of the New Orleans Civil Rights Movement. Most recently, she is editor of Trauma and Life Stories: International Perspectives. She is currently a fellow at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina.

Jane Rosett is an AIDS activist who has been a Special Fellow at the Harvard AIDS Institute. She has been photographing and writing about HIV-AIDS for seventeen years. She is the co-producer, with Jean Carlomusto, of AIDS: A Living Archive, an interactive installation that provides a public forum to commemorate the dead, educate the living and advocate for an end to HIV-AIDS pandemic.

Jack Saul is the Director of the International Trauma Studies Program at New York University, which offers a certificate training program in trauma studies. He has written numerous articles on working with survivors of torture and political violence and lectures widely on trauma-related issues.

Linda Shopes is a historian at the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. She has worked to develop and write about community history projects throughout the state of Pennsylvania. She is co-editor of The Baltimore Book: New Views of Local History and is past president of the Oral History Association.

PROGRAM

Sunday, July 2

Reception: 90 Morningside Drive, at 119th Street, Apt. 3A
6 p.m. - 8 p.m.

Monday, July 3

9 a.m. - 12:00 noon - Introductions, Housekeeping, The History of Oral History
Mary Marshall Clark, Ronald J. Grele, Kim Lacy Rogers

12:00 noon - 2 p.m. - Lunch

2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. Designing Collaborative and Cross Cultural Projects: The Delta, Mississippi Oral History Project
Presenter: Kim Lacy Rogers

4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. Tour of the Oral History Research Office, room 801 Butler Library

Tuesday, July 4

9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. Practice Interviews. Procedures will be outlined on Sunday evening.

10:30 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. Practice Interviews, continued

11:30 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. - Lunch

2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. - Critiques of questionnaires and interviews.
Small group discussion leaders: Mary Marshall Clark, Ronald Grele, Kim Lacy Rogers, Linda Shopes

Wednesday, July 5

9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. Theoretical and Methodological Considerations in Oral History Interviewing and Project Design
Presenter: Linda Shopes

10:30 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. - Break

11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.: Theoretical and Methodological Considerations in Interviewing and Project Design, continued
Presenter: Linda Shopes

Group Discussion.

12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. Lunch

1:30 - 2:30 p.m. - Difficult Memories: The Cultural Coding of Trauma
Presenter: Kim Lacy Rogers

2:30 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. - Break

3:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. Analysis of Oral History Texts from the Delta Project
Discussion leader: Kim Lacy Rogers

Thursday, July 6

9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. Interpreting Trauma Cultures: History and Memory of Lesbian Aids Activism
Panel: Jean Carlomusto, Ann Cvetkovich, Jane Rosett

10:30 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. - Break

11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Screening the Trauma Archive (the documentary work of Jean Carlomusto)

12:30 - 2:00 p.m. - Lunch

2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. Collecting Oral Histories of Survivors: Strategies and Challenges
Presenter: Jack Saul
Responses: The Faculty

Friday, July 7

9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. Conflicting Visions of History in Oral History Interviewing
Presenter: Kim Lacy Rogers

10:30 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. - Break

11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Group Discussion of fellow’s projects

Life History and Memory - Mary Marshall Clark
Community History - Kim Rogers
Research - Ronald J. Grele

12:30 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. - Lunch

2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. - Alan Berliner, filmmaker
A Presentation of New Work

7:00 p.m. - Sail Around the Harbor, South Street Seaport

Saturday, July 8

Trip to Ellis Island - 9:00 a.m.
Tour of Ellis Island Oral History Project offices and site.

Monday, July 10

9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. Group Discussion of Ellis Island Exhibits - Collective Representations of Immigration History

10:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. Break

10:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. The Joint Authorship of the Oral History Interview and Its Literary Representations
Presenter: Alessandro Portelli

12:30 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. - Lunch

2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. - Workshop - Creating Visual History
Recording South African Memories of Struggle
Presenter: Mary Marshall Clark

Tuesday, July 11

9:00 a.m. - 12:00 noon - Documenting and Interpreting Memories of Struggle: The Massacre of the Fosse Adreatine in Rome, Italy
Presenter: Alessandro Portelli

12:00 noon - 2:00 p.m. Lunch

2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. - Tour of United States Social History Project, 34th Street and Fifth Avenue
Graduate Center, City University of New York

Discussion

Wednesday, July 12

9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.
Writing Oral History
Presenter: Alessandro Portelli

10:30 a.m.- 11:00 a.m. - Break

11:00 - 12:30 - Commentary and Group Discussion with Alessandro Portelli

12:30 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. - Lunch

2:00 - 4:30 p.m. Memory, the Holocaust and Restoring the Vanished Past
Presenter: Yaffa Eliach

Thursday, July 13

9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. The Witnessing Imagination
Presenter: Karen Malpede

10:30 - 11:00 a.m. Break