This week’s readings are primarily concerned with the history and development of oral history as a practice. First, two chapters of oral History: an Interdisciplinary Anthology provide insight from and about the originators of modern oral history oin the US, Allen Nevins and Louis Starr. Their perspective is on the early evolution of oral history as a methodology and as a medium, recounting the early days of the practice since the 1930s and 40s and up into the oral history renaissance in the 1970s. The other readings represent more specific case studies. Most prominent is the extensive and fascinating Slave Narratives recorded by the Works Progress Administration, described by Nevins as an early antecedent to modern oral history and containing a wealth of over 2,000 interviews of those who still remembered what it was like to be trapped in bondage. There is also the wealth of labor histories that used oral history as their methodology, as described in Halpern’s article – though Halpern does describe a fundamental disagreement over the role of the oral historian in two labor case studies. Finally there is Portelli’s paper, which focuses less on individual case studies and more on the theory and methodology of oral history.
A common theme is what Starr, Portelli, and the Library of Congress have called “history from the bottom up,” the idea that history is incomplete without the perspectives of those usually forgotten in the history books. From former enslaved African Americans to the radical laborers of America’s mid-twentieth century factories, proponents of oral history advocate for this sort of people’s history as a way to give agency and depth to traditionally marginalized groups. Halpern notes that oral history gave scholars the opportunity to push back against “an earlier historiography that regarded mill workers as passive victims of a suffocating corporate paternalism” (Halpern, 609). For the Slave Narrative project, in addition to saving many priceless voices from what Nevins might call “death’s dateless (and undatable) night” (Nevins & Starr, 30), this bottom-up approach did provide invaluable information and context on the historical understanding of slavery. But it should be remembered that the Slave Narrative project was conducted by the largely-white WPA for a largely-white audience, and thus raises a number of questions about the role of an interviewer in the interpretation of oral sources.
In that vein, Halpern in particular focuses on this, relating the disagreements between authors Peter Friedlander and David Brody over the appropriate level of interviewer involvement. Brody, for example, was critical of Friedlander’s practices, such as the use of pseudonyms and what Halpern calls “explicit theorizing” – in Brody’s eyes, the interviewer as active participant would lead to bias and inaccuracy. On the other hand, Friedlander considered his oral histories to be “collaborative projects:” in his interviews with CIO president Edmund Kord, Friedlander noted that he did not simply ask questions and let Kord lead the debate; instead he served as both guide and active participant at the same time.There is also the debate over the ideal final form of the oral history project: Tape or transcript? Some projects, especially those operating outside the US, do not add a transcript to their database or archive. Instead, they argue, an oral history should remain oral – without the emotional nuances and cultural markers present in the actual voice of an oral author, historians like Potelli claim that much value in oral histories will be lost. By contrast, Starr notes (without taking a side) that those in favor of transcription laud its relative accuracy and staying power; after all, a transcript allows for project iteration.
These were fascinating reads, and the chaotic, very ad-hoc birth of modern oral history is well outlined and described by the authors. I am curious how modern technology – the fall of the tape recorder and the rise of the laptop and phone – has altered oral history best practices, if it has at all.