“More than 18 months into the coronavirus pandemic, there’s already been a bumper crop of books about COVID-19 that have focused primarily on the policy failures that allowed the virus to spread. Eli Saslow’s “Voices from the Pandemic” instead draws attention to the people who have been affected by the virus.” Read the full review here.
Tag: COVID-19
Western Wisconsin COVID-19 Project
“Oral history interviews are conducted by UWEC Public History students with diverse participants across the Chippewa Valley, and are intended to highlight the human experiences and shifts in everyday life felt during the pandemic. Please watch this page as we continue to add to our archive.”
Example of COVID Project
“Voices of Princeton is a collaborative oral history project between the Princeton Public Library, the Historical Society of Princeton, the Arts Council of Princeton, and the Witherspoon-Jackson Historical and Cultural Society. The goal of the project is to collect, share, and archive stories and memories of Princetonians. This project aims to collect stories of Princeton residents in order to capture and preserve a contemporary moment in Princeton’s history and also record residents’ recollections and experiences of previous periods in Princeton’s history.” See the links on left of page to find out more. Then see here for COVID “interview” information.
Students learn history with COVID project
“In her first year on campus, a unique opportunity presented itself to Dr. Rachel Miller, courtesy of the COVID-19 pandemic. “We study them (historical events and periods), we look at them in the rearview mirror,” said Miller, an assistant professor of history. “But rarely do we have room in a history class to process what it’s like to live through all that.” Read more here.
Students interview community members about COVID
“Zoom, masks, family and politics — these are some of the lasting memories shared by participants in a University of Washington student oral history project. Undergraduate seniors in the Public Health Global Health major at the UW School of Public Health partnered with the Washington State Historical Society to record the experiences of friends, family and associates living through the COVID-19 pandemic.” Read full story with video excerpts here.
COVID-19 Project
“American studies faculty and students are documenting the GW community’s experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic as part of a project to demonstrate how the crisis shaped modern history.
Faculty and students teamed up on the project to record video interviews through Zoom with students, their families, faculty, staff and alumni to illustrate the virus’s social and political impacts on their lives. Researchers said interviews and donated materials, like photographs and drawings from GW community members, will be available on the GW Libraries’ archives for historians and researchers to use to understand life during the pandemic.” Click on “project” above to link to the video interviews. Click here for full story.
Battling the pandemic
“On March 26, 2020 I photographed Margaret, a Philadelphia-area nurse about to treat her first COVID-19 patient. I did this in an effort to create an oral history of the city’s response to the nascent global pandemic. Exactly 365 days later I photographed her again in the same place after she had spent a year watching people die. We are all different after that terrible year, but Margaret and her colleagues have seen and endured daily experiences they will never be able to erase from their memory. I have spent 12 months listening to their stories. ” Read the full story here.
Son interviews Mother about COVID
“COVID-19 has altered our lives in numerous ways: from work to school to staying connected to friends and family. While the country processes a year of loss and uncertainty, many are reflecting on how the pandemic has changed them. For BPR and Foxfire’s COVID oral history project, we hear from Asheville resident Ann Goosmann, interviewed by her son George, a student at UNC-Chapel Hill.” Read full story and listen to the interview here.
High school students in USA deal with COVID
“In early spring of 2020, something was in the air—both literally and figuratively. For a good portion of the new year, news had been circulating amongst friend groups, families, and in classrooms about a mysterious, pneumonia-like virus ravaging southern China and parts of Europe. For a while, the idea of this disease, now commonly known as COVID-19, stayed in those far-away lands. Here, we didn’t think much of it—for a while, it was chalked up as no more than the flu. Then, something changed. All of a sudden, Americans coming home from the most affected areas of the world began spreading the disease in their communities. People were dying, and at alarming rates.” Read full article here.
New Zealand COVID Stories
“A collaboration project between Auckland Libraries and Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage launches a five-part podcast series today to commemorate one year since the level four lockdown. Called ‘Kei Roto I Te Miru: Inside the Bubble’, the podcast series is a culmination of short oral histories that were collected by oral historians from various communities around the country.” Read full article with links to interviews here.