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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nAltogether, I found the oral history to be a wonderful read as is, and an insightful example of doing oral history in a university project funded in part by the National Park Service.\u00a0 The interview was conducted in two separate sessions on the same day, represented by \u201cAudiofile 1\u201d and \u201cAudiofile 2\u201d, and was made publicly available (as mentioned prior) in transcript form only.\u00a0 Perhaps most important about reading and then analyzing this oral history was the fact that I could only read it.\u00a0 Reminiscent of Alessandro Portelli\u2019s \u201cWhat Makes Oral History Different\u201d chapter and Louis Starr\u2019s \u201cOral History\u201d chapter from the prior week, the Mora Gilley oral history demonstrates the full transcript versus tape debate in practice.\u00a0 The transcript of such is digitally available and does not seem to be heavily edited\u2014UC Berkeley\u2019s Oral History Center states in an insert page before the transcript that all tape recordings are \u201clightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee\u201d\u2014but is very obviously lacking Portelli\u2019s insistence on the orality of oral sources.\u00a0 But, as Starr mentioned in his chapter, the transcript format has a much greater degree of accessibility and ease of use.\u00a0 I would have loved to have the original tape recording available for comparison, not only in terms of format but also in terms of how my interpretation and \u201creading\u201d of the interview ended up.\u00a0 Alas, only the transcript was available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In terms of the ethical approach, I found no glaring issues or problems with the manner in which Robin Li conducted the interview.\u00a0 While intimate questions were asked that likely elicited emotional responses, I never found there to be any reticence or hostility from Ms. Gilley in response.\u00a0 Topics such as family illnesses and death were brought up naturally, usually from Ms. Gilley\u2019s own volition, and were not pushed to any uncomfortable limit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In terms of the questions asked in the interview, they ranged from thoughtfully insightful to noticeably leading.\u00a0 Several questions were asked that, although well within the topical focus of the overall Rosie the Riveter project, did not fit within the flow of the interview.\u00a0 Questions about Japanese internment (p. 09), Victory Gardens (p. 13), the patriotic aspects of being a Rosie (pp. 13\u20134), segregated work (p. 21), and the dropping of the atomic bomb (p. 22) come off as markedly abrupt, awkward, and out of place.\u00a0 Several of the project\u2019s overarching themes were shoehorned into the interview via leading questions.\u00a0 However, questions relating to wartime child care (pp. 16\u20137), workplace sexism (p. 21), and ethnic and race relations (p. 20), although discussing potentially uncomfortable topics, were asked appropriately and respectfully and elicited solid responses.\u00a0 It is clear that this interview was conducted with specific research questions in mind, but it was able to balance these out with more thoughtful and natural questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In terms of overall style, this oral history was conducted with a very hands-off philosophy, both when interviewing and after the fact with the transcript.\u00a0 While it is impossible to know how much was truly edited and revised without access to the original tape, there are very few instances of narrator or interviewer commentary inserted into the transcript.\u00a0 The interviewer typically only asked one or two sentence questions, and let Ms. Gilley answer as completely as she wished.\u00a0 Only once did the interviewer interrupt Ms. Gilley to ask for further explanation regarding segregated work (p. 21).\u00a0 This oral history was generally conducted via a \u201cless is more\u201d style from the interviewer, and I believe it was successful and appropriate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While the transcript was an engaging read, I feel as though it was lacking without an accompanying tape recording.\u00a0 The transcript most certainly would be more convenient for a researcher simply looking for documentary evidence, and I don\u2019t see any reason why this one wouldn\u2019t suffice.\u00a0 However, it is difficult to truly analyze oral history without the orality.\u00a0 Interruptions were marked by em dashes in the transcript, but there\u2019s no way to know how emotive these were or in what context they occurred; punctuation marks give no insight into tone or other aural cues of significance\/disinterest; altogether, the transcript reads as almost any other historical document does: informative, but dry.\u00a0 This ultimately reduces the unique perspective and singularity of the oral history conducted, reducing it to yet another textual contribution to the historical narrative.\u00a0 Hearing the tape recording would make this oral history much more involved, both from the scholar\u2019s and the narrator\u2019s position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
Oral History Citation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mora Gilley, \u201cRosie the Riveter, World War II Home Front Oral History Project\u201d conducted by Robin Li in 2011, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2012, https:\/\/digicoll.lib.berkeley.edu\/record\/218663?ln=en&v=pdf.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The labor-related oral history that I read for the first Oral History Exercise came from the Rosie the Riveter\/World War II American Home Front project of the Oral History Center of UC Berkeley\u2019s Bancroft Li brary.\u00a0 This project was designed to, according to the project website, explore \u201cwhy people from different backgrounds came to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37392,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","missing-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/rb15oralhistoryblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/rb15oralhistoryblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/rb15oralhistoryblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/rb15oralhistoryblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37392"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/rb15oralhistoryblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/rb15oralhistoryblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/rb15oralhistoryblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/20"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/rb15oralhistoryblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/rb15oralhistoryblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/rb15oralhistoryblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}