Dr. Cliff Kuhn, 812 GCB
404-463-9204
hiscmk@panther.gsu.edu
Hours: M-W 1:00-2:00 or by appointment.

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Purpose

The purpose of the course is to develop an appreciation of the field of oral history, its evolution, methodological concerns, and applications. In addition, students will learn about all facets of the oral history process, including interview preparation and research, interview technique, the nature and character of evidence, transcribing and editing, and legal and ethical concerns. A major component of the course will be a project based on student field work on some aspect of the theme, "The South in Transition." While this course examines oral sources within history, it is useful to students in a broad range of disciplines, including folklore, anthropology, sociology, linguistics, and political science.

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Texts

• Paul Thompson, The Voice of the Past: Oral History, third edition;
  
• Valerie Yow, Recording Oral History;
  
• Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson, The Oral History Reader;
  
• additional reading assignments on reserve.

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Assignments

• A written assessment (3-4 pp.) of one of the designated Georgia Government Documentation Project interviews at GSU Special Collections.
• A major project incorporating at least three hours of oral history interviews on a subject pertaining to the student's research interests. This project will entail: the development of a research plan; conducting the interview(s); preparation of an interview index and partial transcript; and an oral presentation and written essay (12-15 pages), both of which include an evaluation of the interviews in terms of content and process.
• Class participation. Attendance is required and we will be discussing the readings in each class.

In addition to the undergraduate assignments, graduate students in the course will be required to do write a 5-6 pp. book review of a historical work drawing heavily upon oral sources, after clearance by the instructor. Students will be judged on their ability to assess the nature and value of oral evidence as used by the author, and to evaluate the significance of that evidence to the author's thesis. For the other assignments, graduate students will be subject to higher standards than undergraduates.

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Grades

Undergraduates			Graduate students
GGDP assignment	15%	|	GGDP assignment	15%
		|	Book review	10%
Research design	15%	|	Research design	10%
Index and transcript	10%	|	Index and transcript	10%
Oral presentation	15%	|	Oral presentation	15%
Written essay	30%	|	Written essay	25%
Class participation	15%	|	Class participation	15%

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Schedule: Fall 2002

Aug 20: Introduction

Screening of Edward Ives, "An Oral Historian's Work"

Aug. 22: What is special about oral history?

Thompson, Ch. 2, Portelli, "What makes Oral History Different?" and Grele, "Movement without Aim," both in Perks and Thomson

Aug. 27: History of oral history/the slave narratives

Thompson, Ch. 3; James Davidson and Mark Lytle, "The View from the Bottom Rail: Oral History and The Freedmen's Point of View, in After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection, pp. 177-212; John Blassingame, Slave Testimony, pp. xlii-lxiii; Selected interviews in George Rawick, ed., The American Slave:A Composite Biography

Aug 29: Interview Preparation

Yow, Ch. 2; David King Dunaway, "Field Recording Oral History," in Oral History Review 15 (Spring 1987), pp. 21-42

Sep 3: Labor Day -- no class

Sep 5: Interview technique

Yow, Ch. 3; Thompson, Ch. 7; Morrisey, " On Oral History Interviewing," in Perks and Thomson

Sep 10: The Rural South

LuAnn Jones, "Voices of Southern Agricultural History," in International Annual of Oral History, 1990, pp. 135-44; Theodore Rosengarten, All God's Dangers, pp. xiii-xxiv, 3-57; Lu Ann Jones, "'Mama Learned Us to Work': An Oral History of Virgie St. John Richmond, in Oral History Review 17 (Fall 1989), pp. 63-90.

Sep 12: The Relationship Between Interviewer and Narrator

Portelli, "Research as an Experiment in Equality," in Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli, pp. 29-44; Yow, Ch. 5; Valerie Yow. "'Do I Like Them Too Much?': Effects on the Oral History Interview on the Interviewer and Vice-Versa," Oral History Review 24 (1997), pp. 55-80; Karen Olson and Linda Shopes, "Crossing Boundaries, Building Bridges: Doing Oral History Among Working-Class Men and Women, in Daphne Patai and Sherna Berger Gluck, Women's Words, pp. 189-204

Sep 17: The Industrial South

Alessandro Portelli, "Patterns of Paternalism: From Company Town to Union Shop," in Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History pp. 195-215; Allen Tullos, Habits of Industry, pp. 205-84.

Screening and Discussion of "Uprising of '34."

Sep 19: History and Memory

Thompson, Chs. 4-5; David Thelen, "Remembering the Discovery of the Watergate Tapes," Journal of American History, 75 (March 1989), pp. 1222-1262; Thomson, "Anzac Memories," in Perks and Thomson.

Sep 24: Legal and ethical issues

Yow, Ch. 4; Selections from John Neuenschwander, "Oral History and the Law"; Oral History Association Evaluation Guidelines; Code of Federal Regulations 46 (Protection of Human Subjects); National Institutes of Health, Office of Protection of Research Risk guidelines concerning oral history.

Sep 26: Life in the Jim Crow South

Lawrence Goodwyn, "Populist Dreams and Negro Rights: East Texas as a Case Study," American Historical Review 76 (December 1971), pp. 1435-1459; Scott Ellsworth, "The Segregation of Memory" in Ellsworth, Death in a Promised Land, pp. 98-107.

Oct 1: After the interview: processing and transcription

Thompson, Ch. 8; Samuel, "Perils of the Transcript," in Perks and Thomson; Michael Frisch, "Preparing Interview Transcripts for Documentary Publication: A Line-by-Line Illustration of the Editing Process," in Frisch, A Shared Authority, pp. 81-146; Yow, Ch. 9

Oct 3: Civil rights

Youth of the Rural Organizing and Cultural Center, Minds Stayed on Freedom, pp. 1-34, 46-55, 117-130, 143-157; Charles M. Payne, "The Social Construction of History," in Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom, pp. 413-441.

"Playing and Discussion of "Will the Circle be Unbroken" excerpts

Research design due

Oct 8: Interpreting Oral Evidence

Thompson, Ch. 9; Schrager, "What is Social in Oral History?" and Borland, "'That's Not What I Said'," both in Perks and Thomson.

Oct 10: The South and World War II

Clifford Kuhn, Harlon Joye and Bernard West, Living Atlanta: An Oral History of the City, 1914-1948, pp. 311-74; Jennifer E. Brooks, "Winning the Peace: Georgia Veterans and the Struggle to Define the Political Legacy of World War II," Journal of Southern History LXVI (August 2000), pp. 565-604.

Screening and discussion of "State of War."

Oct 15, 17: No class - Oral History Association annual meeting - work on projects

Oct 22: Oral history and family history

Yow, Ch. 8; Kikemura, "Family Life Histories," in Perks and Thomson; Thompson, "A Life-Story Interview Guide," in Thompson

Index and transcript due

Oct 24: Southern politics -- meet in Special Collections, Library South

Alexander Heard, "Interviewing Southern Politicians," American Political Science Review, XLIV (December, 1950), pp. 886-892; Clifford Kuhn, "'There's a Footnote to History!': Memory and the History of Martin Luther King's October 1960 Arrest and Its Aftermath," Journal of American History 84 (Fall 1997), pp. 583-595; Ronald E. Marcello, "Interviewing Contemporary Texas Legislators: An Atypical Approach," Public Historian, 7 (Fall 1985), pp. 53-64.

Interviews from the Georgia Government Documentation Project.

Oct 29: Oral history and community history

Thompson, Ch. 1; Yow, Ch. 6; Linda Shopes, "Oral History and Community Involvement: The Baltimore Neighborhood Heritage Project," in Benson, Brier and Rosenzweig, eds., Presenting the Past: Essays on History and the Public, pp. 249-266

Oct 31: Oral history and radio

David Dunaway, "Radio and the Public Use of Oral History," in Dunaway and Baum, Oral History: An Interdisciplinary Anthology, pp. 333-346; Read, "Presenting Voices in Different Media," in Perks and Thomson.

Selections from "Living Atlanta" and other radio documentaries.

GGDP writing assignment due

Nov 5: Film and video

Thomas L. Charlton, "Videotaped Oral Histories: Problems and Prospects," in American Archivist, 47 (Summer 1984), pp. 228-236; Sipe, "The Future of Oral History and Moving Images," in Perks and Thomson.

Graduate student book reviews due

Nov 7: Oral history in museums and on the stage

Green, "The Exhibition that Speaks for Itself" and Nethercott and Leighton, "Out of the Archives and onto the Stage," both in Perks and Thomson; Della Pollock, "Telling the Told: Performing Like a Family," Oral History Review 18 (Fall 1990), pp. 1-36.

Nov 12: Oral history and new media: CD-roms

Joshua Brown, "Of Mice and Men," in Oral History Review 16 (Spring 1988), pp. 91-109.

Screening of "Maus" and "Who Built America" CD-ROMs.

Nov. 14: Oral history and the internet

Flick and Goodall, "Angledool Stories," in Perks and Thomson; Charles Hardy and Alessandro Portelli, "I Can Almost See the Lights of Home," Journal of Multi-Media History 2 (1999), www.albany.edu/jmmh.

Nov 19: The internationalization of oral history

Sherbakova, "The Gulag in Memory," in Perks and Thomson; Andrew F. Clark, "The Challenges of Cross-Cultural Oral History: Collecting and Presenting Pulaar Traditions on Slavery from Bundu, Senegambia (West Africa), Oral History Review 20 (1992), pp. 1-22; Luke S. K. Kwong, "Oral History in China: A Preliminary Review, Oral History Review 20 (1992), pp. 23-50

Nov 21: No class - Thanksgiving break

Nov 26: Student presentations

Nov 28: Student presentations

Dec 3: Student presentations

Dec 5: Student presentations

Final projects due