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Townsend Oral History Working GroupMinutes of Past MeetingsThe Last Jews of Libya Vivienne Roumani-Denn, Humanities and Area Studies Judaica librarian at Berkeley, related her experiences in Israel recording oral histories with the last Jews of Libya. Vivienne focused on her need to adapt the traditional rubrics of "proper" oral history technique to the cultural realities of the group being recorded and reflected on how her own roots in the community of Libyan Jews gave her both access and insight to her interviewees. She communicated with her interviewees in three and four languages, sometimes simultaneously, and is transcribing all of the recordings into English. From Jerex and Oaxaca to Napa and Sonoma: Using Oral History to Reconstruct the History of Mexican Migrant Networks. Professor Martha Judith Sanchez, researcher of the Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales at the National University in Mexico City and a Fullbright visiting scholar in the Center for Latin American Studies, has been working with migrants since the early nineties, tracing their journey from Oaxaca, first to Mexico City, then to the agricultural lands in the north of Mexico, and now to Napa and Sonoma counties. Martha discussed the origins of the migratory movement of Oaxacan people to Napa and Sonoma valleys.
Sandra Nichols, Ph.D. candidate in Geography, UC Berkeley, discussed a Mexican migrant
network linking the municipality of Jerez (in the north central state of Zacatecas) with Napa,
California. One dimension of this work involves recording oral histories so as to reconstruct
the history of the network that began with two young men in the 1950s and has now grown to
nearly 200 families.
Sanctuary Oral History Project Eileen Purcell reported on her work organizing a major oral history project on the Sanctuary Movement. She is collecting firsthand accounts from a cross section of people who participated in the Public Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s in the San Francisco Bay Area where the movement was born, as well as from a sampling of people nationally and in El Salvador. Interviewees include former Central American refugees, lay and religious women and men who "protected, defended, and advocated" for their rights, as well as some of the governmental officials and religious leaders who shaped and implemented U.S. immigration and foreign policies. The project is also exploring the possibilties of recruiting and training individuals in various cities in the U.S. -- with an emphasis on young people, including the children of Central American refugees -- to expand the collection of stories and to provide an animating tool for self-awareness and community organizing. This project is sponsored by the SHARE Foundation, the National Sanctuary Defense Fund/the Monsenor Romero Foundation.
Eileen, the director of the project, was one of the original organizers of the sanctuary
movement in the Bay Area and nationally as a fulltime organizer for the Archdiocese of San
Francisco. She later became the executive director of the SHARE Foundation in Washington,
DC.
Japanese Peruvian Oral History Project Grace Shimizu, project coordinator of JPOHP, was the speaker. Her presentation included:
Oral History On-Line Joint Meeting of the Oral History Working Group and the Computers and the Humanities Working Group. Merrilee Proffitt, of the computers and the humanities group discussed the Bancroft Library's program to put oral histories on the Internet in a digital archive environment. Using examples from the group of Suffragist oral histories that are now available on line, she demonstrated access and navigation and searching techniques and SGML mark-up intricacies. Ann Lage, of the Regional Oral History Office discussed how electronic publication might affect interviewee candor and interview content, and how privacy concerns of interviewees might be addressed. The session was held at the Flex Lab, School of Information Management
and Systems, in South Hall.
How to Plan, Organize, and Start an Oral History Project Donna Graves, who is organizing a project on women shipyard workers in Richmond, California, and Willa Baum, director of the Regional Oral History Office and advisor to countless community and academic oral history projects, led a discussion of the process of organizing an oral history project, including defining purposes, working with sponsors, seeking funding, selecting interviewees, and typical problems encountered. Organizational Meeting An organizational meeting was held on Friday, September 11, 1998 in The Bancroft's Krouzian Seminar Room from noon to 1:30pm. A variety of participants were in attendance, with interest in topics as varied as the history of the UC Berkeley library systems office, the lives of migrant farm workers in Napa and Sonoma Counties, women shipyard workers in Richmond, and Korean-American religious outlooks A similar variety of topics for future meetings of the working group were suggested, including:
Possible speakers suggested--Robert Blauner, Sociology, on issues of shifting meanings as
tape converts to transcript; Nancy Chodorow, Sociology, on the social construction
of self; Cynthia Stokes-Brown, to reflect on her oral histories of civil rights
activists. We would like all interested members of the group to react to these ideas and submit further ideas for working group agendas. We met Friday, March 13, in the Bancroft Krouzian Room from noon to 1:30pm to look at oral history as constructed memory in the case of ILWU leader Harry Bridges: Robert Cherny, professor of history at San Francisco State University, considered a case of oral history as constructed memory in his paper-in-progress, "Harry Bridges' Youth in Australia: Memories of Politics and the Politics of Memory." Examining interviews with International Longshoremens and Warehousemens Union leader Harry Bridges and research in written records, Cherny looked at the way Bridges' memory of his youth, especially the political parts of those memories, could be documented. For those memories that cannot be documented, some of which probably did not happen, Cherny posed some ways to understand them. Charles Morrissey spoke on "A Half-Century of Oral History in the United States, 1948-1998: Past Patterns, Future Prospects." It has been exactly fifty years since Allan Nevins of Columbia University's History Department launched modern America's first organized oral history project, designed to preserve spoken memories of historical significance. In his presentation, veteran oral historian Charles T. Morrissey examined how oral history has been applied as a research methodology and with what consequences, and then looked forward to reflect on what prospects the future holds for oral history as a technique for documenting American history. Charles Morrissey is a past president of the Oral History Association
and currently the oral history consultant for the Pew Charitable Trusts,
the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Baylor College of Medicine, and the
Oregon Health Sciences University. A frequent teacher of oral history workshops,
he is currently assembling a book of essays, Asking about America: Oral
History and the Nation's Past.
Three panelists who have conducted oral history interviews and/or used archival oral histories as sources reflected on the strengths, weaknesses, and appropriate uses of the genre. Gray Brechin, author and graduate student in Geography, is a frequent user of ROHO oral histories for his work on San Francisco, water in California, et al. Max Friedman, graduate student in History, is using oral history in his study of German Alien Enemies from Latin America in World War Maresi Nerad, director of graduate research in the Graduate Division, has used oral history in her study of Agnes Fay Morgan and the Department of Home Economics at Berkeley. This session was of great interest to those who use oral history in their
own research, who conduct oral histories for others to use and those who
enjoy reading oral history memoirs or pondering the process of making history.
Two artists talked about their work and what role interviews play in their projects. Jon Rubin Since 1993, artist Jon Rubin has been primarily interested in exploring, in partnership with artist Harrell Fletcher, the dynamics of social spaces in communities, attempting to uncover the idiosyncratic nature of daily life. Through installations, publications, videos, and public art projects, their aim is to expand what we understand to be the proper subject of art-making, and to make art accessible to those who might not ordinarily experience it. Often they try to involve the people and places of the immediate area around the exhibition space. Their projects include:
Their current project is a multi-media exploration of the life of a student at the SF Art Institute, involving interviews, drawings, sculpture, video, photography, and textiles. The exhibit will take place at the SF Art Institute. Jeff Norman & Leiko Yamamoto Pech Artists and organizers Jeff Norman and Leiko Yamamoto Pech will be speaking about the Temescal Neighborhood History Project which opened in October, focusing on the Temescal community of North Oakland. Their project consists of a storefront exhibit, several publications, and an oral history video featuring long-time Temescal residents and merchants. The underlying objective of the project was to encourage a greater awareness
of and appreciation for the cultural and natural history of the community.
It was inspired by the belief that seeing our everyday surroundings in a
new, more meaningful way can lead to a deeper connection to this place we
call home, and, in turn, to active participation in shaping its future.
We discussed oral history as participatory research, with Judith Dunning reflecting on her project On the Waterfront: an Oral History of Richmond, California and Victoria Byerly on her oral histories with southern women cotton mill workers. As part of their work on Oakland oral history. Yoruba Richen and Nadine Wilmot presented a brief summary of their project: "The city of Oakland, California is one of the nation's most ethnically diverse communities. It is considered to be one of the least segregated cities in the U.S. This project attempts to document the significant events and process of change that have lead to the city's current racial, ethnic and cultural mosaic. It will do this through collecting, analyzing and presenting the oral histories of local residents of Oakland. Through these histories, we hope to explore the evolution of race and ethnic relations." "We have chosen to locate our research on the period beginning with WW II up to the present. This is the period within which the current racial, ethnic, and cultural characteristics of the city were fashioned and constructed. Rapid urbanization during WWII created the context for the historical production of the city's multicultural, multiethnic, and multiracial reality. We argue that shifts in social values, as they pertain to attitudes toward race, ethnicity and culture were accompanied and were shaped by pivotal events during the period under study. We will examine how people of various class, gender and social status engaged in these events and responded to these changes that they brought about. We will examine, also, those factors at an individual level that contributed to the changing understanding of race relations among our respondents." Our first meeting proved to be a very lively discussion! We considered a whole host of issues and concerns, mostly focusing on research interests of those in the group and a consideration of possible directions the group would like to take. A series of broad questions were raised by participants:
At each meeting, we will decide on the next topic for discussion. |
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Caroline Sears Last update April 19, 1999 |