Past Events
Oral History
Association
Pays Tribute to Sandy Ives
by Pamela dean
One of the great pleasures of
serving as program co-chair for the November 2005 Oral History
Association (OHA) annual meeting in Providence, RI, was being able to
organize a well-deserved tribute to Sandy Ives and his work. The
plenary session brought together oral historians and folklorists to
discuss Sandy’s influence on the two fields.
As chair of the panel, I led off
with a brief comment on how Sandy’s field work class changed my life
and set me on the course I’m still following more than twenty-years
later. Alicia Rouveral, another alumna of the Folklife Center,
closed the session with a discussion of how Sandy’s bridging of the
disciplines of folklore and oral history has been a model for her
own work. Rouveral, who many may remember from her appearance in
"The Oral Historian’s Work" video demonstrating our transcription
techniques on an incredibly antiquated Kaypro computer, was
instrumental in the transformation of the Northeast Archives of
Folklore and Oral History and the Northeast Folklore Society into
the Maine Folklife Center. She now lives in Oregon with her husband
and children and works as an writer and contract folklorist.
Dale Trelevan, emeritus director of
the UCLA Oral History Program and past president of the OHA,
recalled Sandy’s pioneering insistence on the tape as the primary
document in an era when oral history programs were reusing tapes
after they had been transcribed and historians were only interested
in the transcript.
Charlie Morrissey, of Baylor
University Medical Center, discussed his and Sandy’s long practice
of "joshing," including Sandy’s use of Morrissey’s name on sample
forms in his Manual for Fieldworkers, and the many practical
lessons he has learned from Sandy and passed on in his own
workshops.
Neil Rosenberg, Memorial University
of Newfoundland, talked of Sandy’s influence on Canadian folklore
and oral history practice and of his generosity to younger scholars.
Jeff Todd Titon, Brown University professor of folklore and
ethnomusicology and member of the MFC board, discussed the influence
of Sandy’s book Joe Scott on his own work with Hap
Collins, lobsterman, storyteller and poet, enabling him to
appreciate what he calls the community poetry of Scott and Collins,
something his training in literary criticism had failed to provide.
It was a very well attending
session that concluded with what has become an OHA conference
tradition, a heartfelt appreciation by Brother Blue, folklorist,
street performer, and radio personality.
We recorded the session and hope to
make it available on our web site in the near future.
Pauleena MacDougall
Leads Panel at OHA Meeting
MFC associate
director Pauleena MacDougall was chair and commentator for a session
at the OHA meeting titled "Immigrants in Maine," which highlighted
some of our recent research. Graduate students Maria del Carmen
Sandweiss and Elizabeth Hardink presented "Voices of Maine's
Peruvian Immigrants," and "Voices of Chinese Restaurant Workers: a
Feminist Perspective," respectively. Caterina Anderson, a 2005
UMaine graduate now at Syracuse University, presented "Take
the Good and Leave the Bad: Somali Immigrants in Lewiston, Maine."
