{"id":48,"date":"2025-10-29T00:55:52","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T04:55:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/andmattsthefact\/?p=48"},"modified":"2025-10-29T14:36:39","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T18:36:39","slug":"the-care-in-crisis-oral-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/andmattsthefact\/2025\/10\/29\/the-care-in-crisis-oral-history\/","title":{"rendered":"The Care in Crisis Oral History"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Professor Lynn Abrams, in her work Oral History Theory<\/em>, illuminates what she calls crisis oral history. This \u201csignificant sub-genre in oral history practice,\u201d she explains, includes \u201cthe collection and analysis of histories of extreme human experiences [that] offer a way of deepening understanding of events and experiences that have had such profound consequences\u201d on people. (Abrams, 175-7). Kean University Professor Abigail Perkiss exemplifies this sub-genre in her heart-wrenching work, Hurricane Sandy on New Jersey\u2019s Forgotten Shore<\/em>, where she interviews the lives of New Jersey Bayshore victims of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perkiss impressively began this project only a few months after Hurricane Sandy hit, using some of her own graduates – two of them from the Bayshore area – to conduct oral interviews of Bayshore survivors. She employs the interviews of about 60 locals to trace the storm\u2019s build up, situate readers in the harrowing destruction, guide readers through the immediate reckoning, and analyze the response, and map reconstruction. This reconstruction is the core of the book. The oral history interviews collected \u201ccall out the feelings of marginalization for those residents whose communities the television cameras ignored.\u201d (Perkiss, viii). Through oral histories, Perkiss and her students help local residents spotlight unequal regional recovery efforts ignored by the media and state government. Crisis oral history, like other oral history sub-genres, extends agency to its subjects. Amplifying the \u201cvoices of the poor and dispossessed, the wronged and the survivor, to all our attention,\u201d Abrams champions, allows \u201cthose who experienced a catastrophic event to own the experience by telling their story and making it count.\u201d (Abrams, 194). Perkiss accomplishes this by focusing \u201cthe project around questions of power, access, and representation in the wake of the storm.\u201d (Perkiss, Appendix B, 93). Here, oral histories are not simply collected but serve a more polemical purpose to inform future disaster preparedness, resilience, and management efforts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The immediacy of Perkiss\u2019 oral history project highlighted, for me, questions about memory and methodology. Trauma survivors\u2019 memory narratives are unique, Abrams argues, \u201clargely because the respondents have still to come to terms with what happened to them in the past\u201d and the experience may not be \u201cfully assimilated and reviewed.\u201d (Abrams, 93). Holocaust survivor Dori Laub echoes how a lack of closure can plague recall. I understand Professor Perkiss\u2019 colleague, Associate Professor of Psychology Dr. Jennifer Lerner, and her doctoral student – Lindsay Liotta – reviewed the risks of trauma in postdisaster situations with Perkiss\u2019 oral history students. Did Dr. Lerner and Liotta cover Laub\u2019s concerns? Did they cover what Abrams describes as \u201cdeep listening,\u201d which she defines as a process \u201cdenoting effective, present and respectful listening for what is being said, untainted by assumptions, judgements or interruptions?\u201d (Abrams, 187). As the students dealt with traumatic events and traumatized people, what was the ethical framework used in the methodology? Was there a plan to be \u201caware of the needs related to social justice and trauma interviewing\u201d cautioned by Barbara W. Sommer and Mary Kay Quinlan in their Oral History Manual<\/em>? (Sommer and Quinlan, 3)? How does one cultivate community relationships to be able to be trusted in these kinds of interviews? Additionally, what are lessons the students learned through this process? Perkiss\u2019 inclusion of one excerpt from her student Arij Syed, who wrote how the project made him consider \u201chow do you ethically deal with emotional people,\u201d made me wanting more. (Perkiss, Appendix B, 95).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately, Perkiss demonstrates the power and potential of oral histories. More than simply collecting stories – they can help subjects come to terms with traumatic events, reclaim the narrative, and inform future generations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professor Lynn Abrams, in her work Oral History Theory, illuminates what she calls crisis oral history. This \u201csignificant sub-genre in oral history practice,\u201d she explains, includes \u201cthe collection and analysis of histories of extreme human experiences [that] offer a way of deepening understanding of events and experiences that have had such profound consequences\u201d on people. … <\/p>\n

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