ANT 425 Oral History and
Folklore: Fieldwork
Training and
experience in collecting materials of folklore, folklife and oral
history, especially through use of recorders. Covers advance
preparations, interviewing techniques, processing of transcripts,
and utilization of materials so gathered in writing and research.
Tape and equipment provided. Prerequisite: permission.
3
credits
ANT 425 Oral History and Folklore Fieldwork
Spring 2008
An
online course offered by the University of Maine
through Continuing and Distance Education
Instructor:
Pamela Dean, Archivist
Maine Folklife Center
South Stevens 5773
University of Maine
Orono, ME 04469
207-581-1881
pamela.dean@umit.maine.edu
www.umaine.edu/folklife
With the exception of two required texts, all course
materials are available on the web, on electronic reserve, or
through the Firstclass [email] folder that you are given access to
when you enroll in the class. All materials posted by the
instructor or by students to this folder are accessible only
to the instructor and the members of the class.
Scope
and Rationale:
The recorded interview is a research methodology common to
folklorists, cultural anthropologists, historians, journalists,
sociologists, and numerous other disciplines. Community based
historians/folklorists and secondary school teachers who want to
make folklife, history, and culture of the recent past come alive
for their students also find it useful. Too often, however, the
haphazard way such interviews are collected results in evidence that
is superficial, anecdotal, and little better than hearsay. In
learning to conduct well prepared, broad ranging, well documented
interviews, students not only will be enhancing their own research
skills but also will be creating a body of primary material that
will be of value to other scholars.
This course will introduce students to some aspects
of public folklore and history, which may be of interest to graduate
students who want to broaden their employment options, and to others
who may be affiliated with historical societies or museums. It also
provides an opportunity for undergraduates to conduct original
research
Prerequisites,
credit:
Permission of the instructor required; introductory courses in
folklore, anthropology, or US history desirable. Graduate students
will be required to do work beyond that required of undergraduates
if they wish to obtain graduate credit. This may be negotiated on
an individual basis so that the work will be appropriate to the
student’s discipline and of equal difficulty to that assigned to
other graduate students.
Course
Content:
The course will cover fieldwork methods, theory as it applies
primarily to collecting but also to interpreting the materials
collected, and uses of recorded interviews. Training in the use of
recorders and interviewing techniques will be stressed.
Depending on the interests of the students, some classes may place
more emphasis on the end uses of recorded interviews. Potential
products, from scholarly monographs, to radio and video
documentaries, web pages, slide-tape and power point presentations,
plays, and museum exhibits may be considered.
Grading:
Participation in class discussions
20%
Writing assignments
(field journals, reading summaries, transcripts)
20%
Interviews
30%
Final paper or project
30%
Writing
Assignments:
Students will be required to conduct three interviews (minimum of
four hours total), either with one person with a biographical focus,
or with several people with a topical focus. They will index and
selectively transcribe their recordings. Students will keep a
journal, describing and analyzing their fieldwork experiences based
on class readings and discussions. Students will post excerpts from
this journal periodically and will turn in the full journal at the
end of the semester. Short summaries of readings will be assigned
periodically as the basis for online discussions. Regular
participation in online discussions is required. The final writing
assignment will be a ten to fifteen-page paper based on interviews.
As an alternative the class or individuals may elect to produce some
sort of public presentation based on their work.
Final papers should
follow citation guidelines outlined in Kate Turabian, A Manual
for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (latest
edition). Several excellent on-line footnoting and writing guides
are available; for a guide to footnoting, go to:
TURABIAN/CHICAGO STYLE GUIDE. For an on-line guide to
grammar go to:
PURDUE UNIVERSITY: GUIDE TO GRAMMAR, SPELLING, PUNCTUATION.
Final projects in
formats other than papers should also include a bibliography and
citations of sources following the standards above.
All
written assignments should be posted to the appropriate folder on
the Firstclass course folder.
NB:
All postings and email messages MUST use standard spelling,
punctuation, and grammar. Language used must be respectful and
inclusive, nonsexist and non-racist. For more information on
nonsexist language see
http://www.umaine.edu/WIC/both/language.htm.
Academic honesty:
Academic
dishonesty includes cheating, plagiarism and all forms of
misrepresentation in academic work, and is unacceptable at The
University of Maine. As stated in the University of Maine’s online
undergraduate “Student Handbook,” plagiarism (the submission of
another’s work without appropriate attribution) and cheating are
violations of The University of Maine Student Conduct Code. An
instructor who has probable cause or reason to believe a student has
cheated may act upon such evidence, and should report the case to
the supervising faculty member or the Department Chair for
appropriate action.
Students
with disabilities:
If
you have a disability for which you may be requesting an
accommodation, please contact Ann Smith, Director of Disabilities
Services, 121 East Annex, 581-2319, as early as possible in the
term.
Class
Structure:
For
some weeks we will choose a time when we all can get on email for a
real time discussion of readings, recordings, and questions. See
below for the schedule of these sessions. Other weeks I will post
questions that you will be expected to respond to in the class
folder. You may also respond to your fellow students posts. All
written assignments should be posted to the appropriate folder on
the Firstclass course folder by Friday of the week they are due.
Materials intended for discussion (reading summaries, field journal
and interview excerpts) should be posted by Monday of the week they
are due.
Technical
requirements and assistance:
Computer related:
You
must have broadband access to take this class as audio and video
files will be provided via streaming media. Dial-up connections
will not work for this. All software required to access course
content is available for download on the CED web page
http://dll.umaine.edu/cd/html/downloads.html
Also
be sure to read the Getting Started Manual.
CED
staff will be very helpful with all questions about software and
other technical issues.
http://dll.umaine.edu/cd/html/help.html
Audio
recordings:
If you
are recording your interviews in a digital format or your computer
has the software and audio imputs to convert analog audio
(cassettes) to digital format, you may upload your audio files to
the audio folder on the course Firstclass page. Please send them in
.wav format if possible.
If you
are recording on an analog (cassette) recorder and cannot covert to
digital format, please send the original cassette to me (be sure to
keep a copy for yourself; we don’t want the only copy to get lost in
the mail). When this recording is part of a weekly assignment meant
to be shared with the class, please use two-day mail or delivery
service so that I will have time to do the conversion and post the
results for discussion in a timely manner.
Recording equipment:
Analog
cassette recorders and microphones are available for loan from the
Maine Folklife Center. We do not have enough for the entire class
so you should borrow them only when you have an interview
scheduled. If you have a recorder—either analog or digital—you wish
to use, please let me know the make and model as many are not
suitable for oral history work. If you wish to buy your own
equipment, I will be posting a list of suitable recorders and
microphones the first week or class.
Transcription software:
The days of
dedicated transcription machines (Dictaphones and other such
devices) are over. They have been replaced by computer-based
transcribers and transcribing software. There are a number of
transcription playback programs available commercially and via
Internet downloads. One--Express Scribe--is actually free; it "is
installed on the typist's computer and can be controlled using the
keyboard (with 'hot' keys) and/or a foot pedal. This computer
transcriber application features variable speed playback, foot pedal
operation, file management and more." As noted, you do not actually
need the food pedal to operate this program. To download, go to:
http://www.nch.com.au/scribe/index.html.
Course Syllabus
Please
note:
The structure and syllabus of this class is tentative. We may make
changes as the semester goes on but the amount of work will not
increase.
Required Readings:
Ives,
Edward D., The Tape Recorded Interview: A
Manual for Fieldworkers
Donald
A. Ritchie, Doing Oral History: Practical Advice and Reasonable
Explanations for Anyone. 2nd edition. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2003.
Miscellaneous articles, chapters, manuscripts, documents, and
text/audio interview selections--listed under weekly reading
assignments below and available online or on electronic reserve
[http://ursus.maine.edu/search/r].
Week
of 1/14 Introduction to the class
By January 16, please post to class folder your name,
home town, current residence, year, major, reason for taking this
class, previous experience, if any, with interviewing.
Video lecture: 1 hr. Firstclass
folder
Video: An Oral Historians Work ½ hr.
Online
discussion:
When
can we schedule real time discussions?
Do we
want to select a class topic to focus on or each do our own topic?
If the former, I am suggesting that we focus on either
ecology/climate change/natural resources-related issues or the
history of higher education--student life. These are two projects I
am working on and to which you can make significant contributions.
But I am open to other topics.
Useful Web sites:
Maine Folklife Center
http://www.umaine.edu/folklife/
Oral History Association
http://alpha.dickinson.edu/organizations/oha/
Oral History listserve
http://www.h-net.org/~oralhist/
Public folklore listserve, Publore,
https://list.unm.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=publore&A=1
American Folklore Society
http://www.afsnet.org/aboutfolklore/aboutFL.cfm
Week
of 1/21: Truth, Untruth, Facts, and Memory in Oral
History
Required Reading:
Ritchie, Chapter 1
Perks
and Thomson, eds., The Oral History Reader: Thompson, 21-28;
Borland, 320-332 [This appears twice in the e-reserve list, you only
have to read it once.]
Electronic Reserve
http://ursus.maine.edu/search/r
Alessandro Portelli, "The Death of Luigi Trastulli," in The Death
of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral
History, Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1991), pp. 1-26.Electronic
Reserve
http://ursus.maine.edu/search/r
Studs
Terkel, Jan Vansina, Alice Kessler Harris, Dennis Tedlock, Saul
Benison, Ronald J. Grele, "It's Not the Song, It's the Singing:
Panel discussion on Oral History," in Ronald J. Grele, ed.,
Envelopes of Sound [First article under Envelopes of Sound in e-res]Electronic
Reserve
http://ursus.maine.edu/search/r
Recommended Readings:
Memory
and History: Essays on Recalling and Interpreting Experience, Karen
E. Fields, "What One Cannot Remember Mistakenly"
http://www3.baylor.edu/Oral_History/memory%20book%20website/memorybook.htm
Alessandro Portelli, "Deep Exchange: Roles and Gazed in Multivocal
and Multilateral Interviewing," in The Battle of Valle Giula: The
Art of Dialogue in Oral History (Madison, Wisconsin: University
of Wisconsin Press, 1997; and "There's Gonna Always Be A Line:
History-Telling as a Multivocal Art.”
Electronic Reserve
http://ursus.maine.edu/search/r
Week
of 1/28: Interviewing: Technical and Mechanical issues
Video
demonstration and/or video conference If we can all get to a site
where we can do a video conference, so you can see me and I can see
you, we will all try out our recorders. If not, you may post any
questions you have after you watch the demonstration and "play the
game" as described in Ives, p. 21
Online quiz
Reading: Ives: Tape Recorded Interview, Chapter 1
http://www.transom.org/tools/recording_interviewing/
http://www.vermontfolklifecenter.org/res_audioequip.htm
Your recorder manual
Week
of 2/4: Interviewing: Asking the questions
Select and contact interviewee(s) for course project
After
watching the video and reading the assignment below, conduct a brief
practice interview—10-15 minutes—with someone who is older than you
about their high school experiences. Post brief audio excerpt and
field notes to class folder for Firstclass discussion
Video: "You've Got to Hear This Story" ½ hr.
Reading: Ives, Tape Recorded
Interview, pp 25-73
Ritchie, Chapter 3
Southern Oral History Program Guidebook. Excellent "how to" manual.
http://www.sohp.org/howto/guide/
Suggested readings:
The
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's (USHMM) Department of Oral
History. Oral History Interview Guidelines.
http://www.ushmm.org/archives/oralhist.pdf
Week
of
2/11:
Ethics, shared authority, and humans subjects review
Listen to
interviews done by your fellow students. Be prepared to discuss
what worked and didn’t work in your interview. Firstclass
discussion.
Reading: Ives, The Tape Recorded
Interview, 91-99
Read
one of the following and prepare a one page summary; post to class
folder. We will divvy up these readings the week before.
Selection from John A. Neuenschwander, Oral History and the Law
(revised edition) Albuquerque, NM: Oral History Association, 2002.
Electronic Reserve
http://ursus.maine.edu/search/r
Daphne
Patai, "U.S. Academics and Third World Women: Is Ethical Research
Possible?" from Sherna Gluck and Daphne Patai, eds., Women's Words:
The Feminist Practice of Oral History, New York: Routledge, 1991.
Electronic Reserve
http://ursus.maine.edu/search/r
"Protecting Human Beings: Institutional Review Boards and Social
Science Research" (2000). American Association of University
Professors.
http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/comm/rep/A/protecting.htm
Interview release forms. Class folder
Michael Seadle,
"Whose
Rules? Intellectual Property, Culture, and Indigenous Communities,"
D-Lib Magazine (March 2002).
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march02/seadle/03seadle.html
"Should All Disciplines Be Subject to the Common
Rule? Human Subjects of Social Science Research,"
Academe (May-June, 2002).
http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/2002/MJ/For+the+Record/FTR2.htm
The
Belmont Report. Office of the Secretary Ethical Principles and
Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research. The
National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of
Biomedical and Behavioral Research (April 18, 1979).
http://www.nus.edu.sg/irb/Articles/Belmont%20Report.pdf
Week of 2/18:
Insider/outsider: interviewing across lines of race,
sex, age, class, ideology
Readings: Jane Sherron De Hart, “Oral History and
Contemporary History: Dispelling Old Assumptions,” pp 582-595; and
Kathleen Blee, “Evidence, Empathy, and Ethics:
Lessons from Oral Histories of the Klan,” 596-606,
The Journal of American History,
Vol. 80, No. 2, Sep., 1993
http://www.jstor.org/view/00218723/di975305/
Perks
and Thomson, eds., The Oral History Reader, pp. 87-100,
172-182, 333-356.
Electronic Reserve
http://ursus.maine.edu/search/r
Week of 2/25
Processing & paper work: transcribing, indexing, archiving
Transcribe and index practice interview
Online
discussion of results of practice interview
Video: Visit to Maine Folklife Center
Archives
Reading: Ritchie, chapter 6
Transcribing Style Guide. Institute for Oral History. Baylor
University.
http://www.baylor.edu/Oral_History/Styleguide.html
Maine
Folklife Center transcribing, indexing, and accessioning forms and
procedures and sample databases. In class folder
2/29-3/17: Spring Break
Week
of 3/17: Complete and index first interview
Post
field notes and recording index for discussion
Online discussion
Reading:
Dennis
R. Preston, “Ritin Fowklower Daun Rong,” Folklorists’ Failure in
Phonology.
http://www.jstor.org/view/00218715/ap020384/02a00030/0
Week
of 3/24: Listening for a change
Listen
to an audio interview from one of the collections listed below (but
make sure you select interviews that you can listen to, that
is, that have the audio available on line). Write a 3-5 page
critique/analysis of the interview that you will post as the basis
of our online discussion . Make sure your review covers both
substantive and technical matters: interviewer-interviewee
interaction, ethical issues, questioning strategy, content, sound
quality, and so on. You may also find your own sites (please specify
the full URL if you are selecting a site not listed here).
Free
Speech Movement: Student Protest - U.C. Berkeley, 1964-65.
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu:2020/dynaweb/teiproj/fsm/oral
Includes searchable oral history transcripts online, documents,
video and sound recordings, bibliographies, and more. A co-operative
project between The Bancroft Library of the University of California
at Berkeley and the Free Speech Movement Archives.
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Web Site. Oral histories.
http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/audio/default.html
Voice/Vision. Holocaust Survivor Oral Histories.
Dr.
Sid Bolkosky's collection of interviews with Nazi Holocaust
survivors. Bolkosky is Professor of History at the University of
Michigan-Dearborn and has interviewed over 150 survivors (over 330
hours of recordings). Some of these recordings are available on line
as Adobe Acrobat file with audio links.
http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/.
The
Virtual Oral/Aural History Archive, directed by Sherna Berger Gluck
and Kaye Briegelat at California State University/Long Beach is a
collaborative project of the campus' Academic Computing Services,
the College of Liberal Arts, and the University Library. The
searchable site contains hundreds of hours of oral interviews on a
variety of topics, many specific to California social and political
history.
http://www.csulb.edu/voaha
Voices
from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant
Worker Collection. This is an online presentation of an
ethnographic field collection documenting the everyday life of
residents of Farm Security Administration (FSA) migrant work camps
in central California in 1940 and 1941. The collection includes an
extensive audio archive of interviews. Go to:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/afctshtml/toddbibperformerindex.html
Like a
Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World Web site.
Created by Dr. James Leloudis and Dr. Kathryn Walbert as a part of
the American Historical Association's program Teaching and Learning
in the Digital Age. The Web site includes interview selections from
hundreds of interviews with working-class Southerners used by the
six authors of the book Like a Family (1987, 2000). The
interviews were originally conducted by the Southern Oral History
Program in the Piedmont Industrialization Project of the late 1970s
and early 1980s.
http://www.ibiblio.org/sohp/laf/overview.html
Southern Oral History Program. Archives.
On-line selections from the Southern Oral History Program. Includes
interviews with Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Faubus, Orval
and others. Go to:
http://www.sohp.org/archives/index.html
U.S.
Senate Oral History Project.
The
Senate Historical Office under Associate Historian Donald A. Ritchie
interviews former senators, Senate officers, and staff. The project
is beginning to make full interviews available online from its
collection. Go to:
http://www.senate.gov/learning/learn_history_oralhist.html
Selections from History Matters: Many Pasts.
Selections from a Web resource guide produced at George Mason
University devoted to providing useful materials for teachers and
students of U.S. history. The "Many Pasts" section of the site
offers numerous excerpts from oral histories. Most of the selections
are short. Go to:
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/browse/manypasts/.
Rutgers Oral History Archives of World War II Text only. Extensive
collection of oral histories pertaining to World War II.
http://oralhistory.rutgers.edu
Studs
Terkel Interviews
http://www.studsterkel.org/
Online discussion
Week
3/31: Conduct second interview
Post
field notes and recording index for discussion
Online discussion
Week
twelve:
Week
4/7: Public history, public folklore: Publications and web
pages
Readings: Ritchie, 222-36, 245-51
Perks
and Thomson, eds., The Oral History Reader, pp. 421-431. Flick and
Goodall, “Angledool Stories.”
Electronic Reserve
http://ursus.maine.edu/search/r
Suggested readings:
Thomas
Dublin and Melissa Doak, "Miner's Son, Miners' Photographer: The
Life and Work of George Harvan," in
The Journal for MultiMedia History
3 (2000).
http://www.albany.edu/jmmh/
Charles Hardy III and Alessandro Portelli, "Can Almost See the
Lights of Home ~ A Field Trip to Harlan County, Kentucky," in
The Journal for MultiMedia History
2 (1999).
http://www.albany.edu/jmmh/
Thomas
J. Kriger, "The 1939 Dairy Farmers Union Milk Strike in Heuvelton
and Canton, New York," in
The Journal for MultiMedia History
1 (1998).
http://www.albany.edu/jmmh/
Telling Their Stories: Oral History of the Holocaust.
http://www.tellingstories.org/.
American Slave Narratives: An OnlineAnthology
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/wpa/wpahome.html
Week
4/14: Public history, public folklore: Radio, theater,
museums
Readings: Ritchie, 237-245.
Perks
and Thomson, eds., The Oral History Reader, pp. 414-420, 448-464.
Peter Reed, “Presenting Voices in Different Media”; Amy
Green
Electronic Reserve
http://ursus.maine.edu/search/r
Marty
Pottenger, "CWT#3: Making City Water Tunnel #3," High Performance
(Spring 1997), pp.2-10
http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/archivefiles/2002/09/cwt3_making_cit.php
Della
Pollock, "Telling the Told; Performing Like a Family," Oral History
Review 18/2 (Fall 1990): 1-36.
Electronic Reserve
http://ursus.maine.edu/search/r
Week
4/21& 4/28: Final project presentations
