Dr. Myrna Katz
Frommer and Dr. Harvey Frommer
An
Interdisciplinary Course in the Creative Writing Concentration
that welcomes all
students in the MALS community
Description:
This course will explore the theoretical implications, practical applications, and literary dimensions of oral history. Through reading and discussion, students will be exposed to a variety of oral histories and evaluate the uses of individual and/or collective memory as a means of documenting, understanding, and appreciating the past. Oral history will be examined as a literary genre with consideration of how the oral historian becomes a creative writer whose work relies almost wholly on the voices of those interviewed. The special demands of oral biography will be considered as well.
Issues to be addressed include: the place of oral history -- by nature personal and subjective -- in the larger historical framework; the changes demanded by a shift in medium as the oral historian transfers taped commentary to print; the role of the oral historian/oral biographer as re-caster and re-arranger of memory.
Selected oral histories will be contrasted with and compared to traditional historical accounts of similar events, as well as to one another as regards purpose, methodology, style, and literary effectiveness. The roles and responsibilities of the practitioner as interviewer, archivist, historian, biographer, and artist will be examined and critiqued. A work of communication theory will be read for insights into the kinds of cultural mindsets orality fosters as opposed to literacy.
Each student will produce an oral history project with 6-12 voices on a cultural, institutional, local, familial, personal, or event-based topic. Ongoing guidance will be given by the professors in one-on-one meetings as the student goes through the process of selecting a theme and subjects to interview, preparing for and conducting interviews, transcribing and editing tapes, and fashioning from them the final work. Through discussing their projects in the Workshop component of the course, students will be able to network and benefit from feedback.
Requirements
- Timely and thorough readings of assigned works; informed participation in class discussion on readings (books must be brought to class for pinpoint reference and sample readings).
- Participation in Collateral Readers’ Panel based on in-depth reading of a traditional historical work on the same subject treated in an assigned oral history.
- Submission of the Oral History Project
Grades will be based on the quality of work in all of the above.
Attendance at all class sessions is mandatory
Hours will be held mainly on Fridays from 1-5pm: place to be announced. Students are expected to meet with either professor a minimum of every other week for a one-on-one consultation lasting 15 minutes to a half hour.
REQUIRED READING
Frommer, Myrna Katz and Harvey. It Happened in Manhattan: An Oral History of Life in the City During the Mid-Twentieth Century. N.Y.: Berkley, 2001.
Hampton, Henry and Fayer, Steve. Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s through the 1980s. N.Y.: Bantam, 1990.
Havelock, Eric A. Preface to Plato. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963.
Miller, Merle. Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman. N.Y.: Berkley, 1984.
Terkel, Studs. The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two. N.Y.: Ballantine, 1984.
Oral History Reader, Volume VI
RECOMMENDED READING
Cook, Taya Haruko and Theodore F. Japan at War: An Oral History. N.Y.: New Press, 1993.
Friedländer, Saul. The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945. N.Y.: HarperCollins, 2007.
Frommer, Myrna Katz. Always Up Front: the Memoirs of Helen Fried Kirshblum Goldstein, Jerusalem: Gefen, 2005.
Frommer, Myrna Katz and Harvey. It Happened in Brooklyn: An Oral History of Growing Up in the Borough in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. N.Y.: Harcourt Brace, 1993, 1995; Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004.
Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, Inc.. 2005.
Grele, Ronald J. Envelopes of Sound: the Art of Oral History. Chicago: Precedent, 1985.
Lee, Joann Faung Jean. Asian Americans. N.Y.: The New Press, 1992.
Ong,Walter J. From Orality to Literacy: The Technologizing of the World. N.Y.:Routledge, 1982.
Perks, Robert and Thomson, Alstair. The Oral History Reader. N.Y.: Routledge, 1998.
Ritter, Lawrence S. The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It. N.Y.: Morrow, 1992.
Shenk, Joshua Wolf. Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness. Houghton Mifflin Co. 2005.
Terkel, Studs. Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression. N.Y.: Ballantine, 1986.
Oral History Reader, Volumes I-V
Thompson Paul. The Voice of the Past: Oral History. N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2000