When an oral history essay places the experiences of an individual within the context of a historical period, it can help illuminate both the individual’s experience and the historical period. Folklore: Folklorists study culture as it is expressed in everyday life and often use oral history projects to gather materials to preserve and study. Interviewing individuals is one of the primary means of accessing folklore; for example, folklorists use oral histories Hello, my name is Tyler Tietjen. For my ninth-grade oral history project I chose to interview my grandmother, Liliane Anita Tietjen. I decided to make Mrs. Tietjen the subject of this interview because of her experiences living in Cuba in the ’s and her first-hand knowledge of the rising of Cuba’s well-known dictator, Fidel Castro · Its author, David G. McComb, "is a professor of history at Colorado State University, and has published numerous books and articles on Texas history" (Texas State Historical Association).The thesis of the book is that, throughout the history of Galveston, including its key natural and technological events, e.g., hurricanes and storms; a yellow fever outbreak, the Civil ar; port construction
Oral History – The Writing Center • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
This handout will help you figure out how to use oral histories in essays. It will give you suggestions for how to prepare for and conduct oral history interviews and help you determine, based on your context and purpose, how to integrate raw material into your essay. However, we do know a great deal about everyday experience in our own time and culture, and a large part of that knowledge comes not from textbooks but from talking to others. We learn about the histories of our families through conversation with those who remember them and about what various cultures value by observing their celebrations and listening to their music, oral history interview essay example, among other things.
So if you want to learn about another culture, country, era, etc. Oral history involves interviewing a person or group to get an inside perspective into what it was like to live in a particular time or is like to live as the member of a particular group within a society.
We can also learn more about the experiences of groups from all sections of society, including the ones whose experience is not always thoroughly known or well documented, such as the working class, ethnic or religious minorities, or women. When professors use oral history projects in classes, they usually ask you to interview only one or two people.
The interview stage of the process requires effective question-making and interviewing skills. Usually, the project consists of taking raw material from an interview and shaping it into an essay.
This step requires you to make some decisions about how you want to present the material and analytical skill to help you interpret what you learn. Fields in which you might be assigned an oral history paper include history, anthropology, and other disciplines that study the experiences of specific social groups such as women or ethnic groups. The goals of these fields affect the ways they use this kind of project:.
Dominant cultures have a tendency not to notice or acknowledge the experiences of certain subgroups, viewing them as peripheral rather than central—in other words, marginalizing them. Academic fields have emerged to explore the experiences of marginalized groups, and these fields tend to value experiential knowledge. Oral history projects can be a way of accessing such knowledge. Before the interview, familiarize yourself with the history and characteristics of the culture your interviewee is from.
Some interviews may be fairly unstructured, with only general guidance from you. For instance, you may just choose some topics to discuss, oral history interview essay example, allowing the interviewee to lead the way. Some interviews, especially those in undergraduate course assignments, are more highly structured and take the shape of a list of questions oral history interview essay example responses.
This is especially useful when you hope to use the raw material of the interview to make a particular point or are looking to address very focused issues. Think about what kinds of issues would be most helpful for you to learn about. For instance, learning how the person felt about major life events might help you understand how your interviewee sees his or her life as a whole. Questions about what it was actually like to live through segregation or the Vietnam War might give you a new perspective on a historical time period.
Ask if the interviewee would prefer that you not use his or her actual name. Tape record the interview if possible. Test your tape recorder, digital voice oral history interview essay example, or videocamera ahead of time and bring extra batteries if necessary. In any interview setting, try to select an environment free from distractions, so that both you and the interviewee will be able to concentrate.
Choose a spot where you will both feel comfortable. Silence will feel awkward at first, but give your interviewee a chance to think. Watch for signs of fatigue. Making assumptions about the person may damage trust and skew the essay you write. Sometimes, you may be asked to transcribe your oral history interview or part of it. Transcription is the process of taking a sound file and translating it to text; it creates a written transcript of an oral conversation.
One of the goals of transcribing interviews is to give readers a sense of the interview—how was it formatted, was it formal or informal, did the interviewer ask a lot of questions or did the interview subject do most of the talking with just a few prompts, what language and speaking style did the participants use? Therefore, the transcript should reflect, as closely as possible, the words, speech patterns, and thought patterns of the interview subject.
His or her word choice, grammar, and ideas should be transcribed as accurately as possible. Transcribing can be a long and very detailed process. It will be easiest if you take detailed notes during the interview about the different questions, topics, and themes that you discuss. Write down any memorable phrases or ideas, so you have oral history interview essay example markers for different points in the interview.
You will need to listen to the entire portion of the interview to be transcribed several times. Many people find it helpful to listen all the way through a section once, oral history interview essay example, then again, transcribing as much as possible, oral history interview essay example, then a third or fourth, or fifth!
time in order to fill in all oral history interview essay example holes, oral history interview essay example. At the end of this handout, you will find some websites that detail how to transcribe an oral history interview. When you have a complete transcript, it is common practice to return it to the interviewee for editing—these changes can be noted in various ways or integrated into the document.
Interviewees may need to correct things like dates, names, or places. Or they may want to provide more elaboration or clarification on a subject. Though this is standard practice for professional historians, your instructor may or may not expect you to do this. The process you use will depend on what you want your essay to do. Because oral history papers can vary a great deal according to their aims, make sure to develop a clear sense of your purpose. The assignment itself may specify quite clearly what kind of an oral history project you may do or leave many of the choices up to you.
In either case, figuring out what you want your essay to accomplish will oral history interview essay example you make definitive decisions about how to write it. C and D are especially common in undergraduate assignments of this type, but every assignment is different. If you felt limited, why do you think that might have been? If you want your essay to transcribe the interview, you will just present the questions and answers:. You may even include some references to secondary sources, depending on the assignment and your own sense of whether they would strengthen your analysis:.
We consulted these works while writing this handout. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using, oral history interview essay example. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial. We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback. Baylor University. Accessed June 24, Library of Congress. Last updated August Moyer, Judith.
Harvard University. Shopes, oral history interview essay example, Linda. February oral history interview essay example This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.
You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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4.) Writing interview questions and a script for interview
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When an oral history essay places the experiences of an individual within the context of a historical period, it can help illuminate both the individual’s experience and the historical period. Folklore: Folklorists study culture as it is expressed in everyday life and often use oral history projects to gather materials to preserve and study. Interviewing individuals is one of the primary means of accessing folklore; for example, folklorists use oral histories Hello, my name is Tyler Tietjen. For my ninth-grade oral history project I chose to interview my grandmother, Liliane Anita Tietjen. I decided to make Mrs. Tietjen the subject of this interview because of her experiences living in Cuba in the ’s and her first-hand knowledge of the rising of Cuba’s well-known dictator, Fidel Castro · Oral History Can Be Worthwhile. Oral History Essay Oral History Interview Paper Alandy Sanchez Hist. Oral History Research Paper Example Topics And Well Written Essays. Strengths And Weaknesses Of Oral History As A Research Method Oral. Oral History Essay Alle Terrazze Restaurant Meetings Events. Essay Citation Mla Format Research Paper Apa
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