Category: Uncategorized

Food of America’s South

The stories and history surrounding Southern food are just as colorful and diverse as the food itself. The Southern Foodways Alliance (click Our Work button for oral histories) collects stories from across the region and celebrates the contributions of countless classes, races and ethnicities on Southern cuisine. ased in Wilmington, N.C., Sara Wood works as an oral historian with the SFA. The Daily Tar Heel sat down with Wood to find out more about her research and what she has learned from working in the South. For full story, click here.

 

Full story Boston College tapes

Anthony McIntyre made one thing clear: The project had to remain absolutely secret. If Boston College wanted him to interview former members of the Irish Republican Army, he needed that guarantee. They would be talking about dangerous things—bombings, shootings, and murder.  It was June of 2000, just two years after a controversial peace accord ended three decades of conflict in Northern Ireland. Mr. McIntyre, an independent historian, was having dinner at Deanes Restaurant, in the center of this small, working-class city, with an Irish journalist and a librarian from Boston College.  For complete story, including interview excerpts, click here.

First 10 Years of StoryCorps

“Ties That Bind: Stories of Love & Gratitude from the First Ten Years of StoryCorps,” by Dave Isay, with Lizzie Jacobs. New York: The Penguin Press, 2013. 202 pages, $25.95 (hardcover).  Dave Isay is founder of StoryCorps, the oral history project that has collected conversations between friends and family members for the National Archives and for airing on National Public Radio on Friday mornings for the past 10 years. As StoryCorps began its collection process, Studs Terkel stood in Grand Central Station at the first recording booth and proclaimed: “Today, we shall begin celebrating the lives of the uncelebrated.” During the past 10 years, StoryCorps has more than met all expectations for success by recording almost 50,000 interviews from more than 1,000 locations spread over all 50 states.  Read full story here and listen to an interview with Dave Isay here.

Call for Australian Indigenous stories (Sydney)

The city of Sydney is seeking former and current Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander service men and women to share their stories of war and peace for a special oral history project. Aboriginal artist and curator Fabri Blacklock will select up to 20 stories to take pride of place on the city's new oral history website sydneyoralhistories.com.au with audio recordings, transcripts and photographs. For full story click here.

Samuel Proctor Oral History Project (USA)

Paul Ortiz is one of those rare individuals who has managed to merge his vocation and his avocation. As director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at University of Florida since 2008, he and his team of about 50 students gather interviews with individuals ranging from migrant farmworkers to war veterans.  “Our charge is really to try to document living history as much as possible,” Ortiz said. “We’re constantly interviewing people from different walks of life.” For full story click here.

Chicago Youth Violence

Caitlin Tyler-Richards says:
I’m not sure my introduction will do justice to this week’s interview between OHR managing editor Troy Reeves and DePaul University Professor Miles Harvey. An English professor and bestselling author trained in journalism, Harvey is the editor of How Long Will I Cry: Voices of Youth Violence (Big Shoulder Books, 2013), a compilation of oral histories collected by students in Harvey’s class “Creative Writing and Social Engagement” from young and old Chicago residents affected by youth violence. In addition to relating the powerful collection’s interdisciplinary origins, Harvey discusses oral history as a narrative form and the value of collaborative story telling.

Read full story, watch trailer about the book and listen to this very interesting podcast interview here.

Keith McGowan Obituary

Andrew Rule writes about the recent death of talkback radio host, Keith McGowan, who had the "graveyard shift".  He says:
"In 1990 I was driving home for an hour after midnight after finishing a late shift on this newspaper's predecessor, The Sun. Talkback keeps you alert on the road better than music, so I became one of thousands who tuned in to hear McGowan talking to the lonely, sleepless and sleep-deprived. Old people called in to talk, mostly about a past that was rapidly vanishing, of Depression and war. Almost by accident, McGowan had tapped into a vein of oral history. It gave me an idea to publish the extraordinary stories of ordinary people.  McGowan loved it – and so did his listeners. Hundreds of them wrote about their lives or their parents' lives, and sent pictures. The result was Thanks for the Memories, first of what would be a series of five "Overnighters" books. When McGowan launched it at Melbourne Town Hall the queue stretched down the street and around the corner."  See full story here. The books are out of print but you can get them, see this link.

 

Inuit Cree Reconciliation

The war in northern Quebec began before there was a Quebec, before anyone but Cree and Inuit lived there, and it ended more than two centuries ago. But as filmmakers Zacharias Kunuk and Neil Diamond discovered, the long conflict between the two native peoples still echoes through their present-day relations.  Inuit Cree Reconciliation, the 45-minute film Kunuk and Diamond made about the war and its modern-day aftermath, spans at least three centuries and three languages (Cree, Inuktitut and English). It brings to life a chapter of northern history that’s scarcely known elsewhere, in the stunningly beautiful places where it occurred. The film also gives pride of place to the way First Nations retain their history, through stories handed down by elders. This is a real indigenous documentary, if that word even applies to a project so grounded in oral culture. For full story, including link to the documentary, click here.

Alice Springs interviews

Ken Johnson –

Ken Johnson arrived in Central Australia in 1978.  His experience working with Aboriginal people to bring Mala and Bilby back from the brink of extinction won him renown and grounded him in the process of successful intercultural engagement.  In the latter part of his career, he was integral to the evolution of the Alice Springs Desert Park and Desert Knowledge movement.  Now retired, he has turned his prodigious talent to writing, with a book honouring the life of HH Finlayson in development.  In this oral history, Ken reflects on these stories and more.

Listen to this audio interview from ABC in Alice Springs.  You will also see links to other interviews on the site – click here.