Oral history

by bam

Oral history is the only form in this series whose primary evidence is a person remembering, which makes it the one where being wrong is sometimes the most valuable thing in the recording. This course covers what an oral history is and what it is not, why the word is narrator rather than subject, memory as evidence rather than as unreliable testimony, research before the interview, the life-review interview and the long silences it needs, equipment and metadata that will outlive your laptop, the legal and ethical layer of the deed of gift, transcription and the choices it forces, interviewing family and interviewing about trauma, and what an archive owes a narrator decades later. Built on the six decisions from How Stories Work, using the Oral History Association's published standard rather than a private house style.