For this week’s special “choose your own adventure” reading, I selected Ruth Frankenberg’s White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness. Frankenberg was a social scientist by trade and earned her PhD in the History of Consciousness, an interdisciplinary field. Her first book, White Women, Race Matters, takes a decidedly interdisciplinary approach to the …
Author Archives: Claude Ellenberg
We Will Rebuild
Abigail Perkiss’s Hurricane Sandy: On New Jersey’s Forgotten Shore provides a vivid recount of New Jersey’s people and community in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Reflecting on my own upbringing in Florida (close enough to the coast to remember worry about the dangers of hurricanes but not close enough to live in fear of storm …
Oral History Methodology Statement
This oral history methodology statement serves to outline and, in some relatively shallow depth, to expound on the methodology intended for use during the conduct of an interview with a selected subject pursuant to the oral history class. The statement attempts a modicum of synthesis of the readings covered during the class. It is structured …
That’s Not Right!
The theme of dancing about architecture abides in our oral history readings. Too, the theme of reconstructing memory and all its organic challenges. Perhaps a dozen years ago, I visited Rowan Oak in Oxford, MS, William Faulkner’s home and now a museum. I draw on that and other experiences in interpreting some of these themes. …
Oral History Week 5: The Sound of
As the draft during World War II removed men from male-coded spaces and sent them off to swell the ranks of the US Military, women had a unique opportunity to engage in spaces that would have–and did–exclude women. Sherrie Tucker’s Swing Shift: “All Girl” Bands of the 1940s offers unique insight into a brief moment …
Oral History Week 4: Wobbly
In 1977, Rob Rosenthal conducted interviews in Seattle, WA, while researching for his MA thesis. He studied the 1919 general strike in Seattle, interviewing the men and women who were present or had valuable knowledge of the 1919 strike. The interviews generally follow a typical layout of prescribed questions. Still, one interview stands out as …
Oral History Week 3: Raconteur
Between October 1977 and May 1981, the Louis B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky conducted, as part of an oral history project on Robert Penn Warren, forty-three interviews of Warren and his friends, family, and colleagues. The Louis B. Nunn Center processed, transcribed, archived, and published the project over the …
Is it messy? Or is it just Complex? Observations on Oral History, week 2
The Sci-Fi genre has, since my youth, played a prominent role in my extracurricular reading. I took a particular liking to Isaac Asimov’s works, and I often find myself rereading his Foundation series, a major plot point of which is the concept of psychohistory, co-developed by the character Hari Seldon. This fictional study, not to …
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Statement of Purpose
My primary research interest is anti-Americanism in Guatemala from 1950-1960, analyzing political correspondence, media, and artistic expressions leading up to and following the 1954 coup. By examining both US and Guatemalan perspectives, I seek to enlighten the multi-layered perceptions that shaped the era and to understand not only what happened but why it happened. My …