Dr. Michelle Winslow Discusses Oral History in Palliative and End-of-Life Care at the 2017 Oral History Summer Institute

Dr. Winslow speaks at the 2017 CCOHR Oral History Summer Institute.

By Fanny Julissa García, Summer Institute Communications Coordinator

During the second week of the 2017 Oral History Summer Institute, fellows welcomed Dr. Michelle Winslow, who traveled from Sheffield in the United Kingdom to present her use of oral history in palliative and end-of-life care. Dr. Winslow is the co-founder of the oral history service at the Sheffield Macmillan Unit for Palliative Care, where she pairs volunteers with patients interested in producing audio recordings of their life history. Preparation for these interviews includes training volunteers on oral history practice and interviewing skills.

Palliative care, as Dr. Winslow explained, includes the act of caring for people who are facing serious illness and end-of-life processes. The care patients receive helps to improve quality of life and aims to relieve pain and other distressing symptoms, including the psychological impacts of illness, which can include depression and anxiety.

The goal here is to normalize dying as a fact of life, and she uses oral history to help individuals remember themselves before they became ill. Long-term illness, she said, can disrupt a person’s sense of self, and oral history provides an opportunity to restore dignity, autonomy and affirm life.

Dr. Winslow’s oral history service creates high quality voice recordings, which enhance holistic care and benefits both participants and families. The oral history service uses the life history method to produce a multi-layered audio and written document of the person’s entire life. “Recalling and describing life events brings to light underlying patterns of meaning,” says Dr. Winslow, and may help participants conclude “unfinished business,” as well as appreciate the interest taken in them as people.

Many of the recordings are archived and available for research and Dr. Winslow explained that an added benefit of the oral history service and the process of recording patients in end-of-life oral history interviews is that they provide healthcare professionals an opportunity to hear these recordings and gain a deeper understanding of terminally ill patients.

Mary Marshall Clark and Cameron Vanderscoff, Co-Directors of the 2017 Oral History Summer Institute believe that what is most fascinating about Dr. Winslow’s work is that “in following the careful path of oral history procedures and ethics, Dr. Winslow has instantiated a flawless oral history program in multiple sites that will only grow.”

Vanderscoff agrees and added, “Her work pushes us to consider not only how our practice can find new traction and purpose in palliative settings, but how we can develop the oral history process itself as an act of care. She connects oral history more closely with an ethic of shared meaning-making, and for revisiting the potential of the life history approach as a positive intervention for both interviewer and narrator.”

For more information about Dr. Michelle’s work, read “Recording Lives: The Benefits of an Oral History Service” in the 2009 edition of the European Journal of Palliative Care.

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Fanny Julissa García is a recent graduate of the Oral History Master of Arts program at Columbia University. Her research focuses on the Central American Refugee Crisis and the rise of immigration detention centers in the U.S. She currently works as a social media marketing content writer for various organizations including Groundswell: Oral History for Social Change, the Columbia Oral History Master of Arts program, and the CCOHR 2017 Oral History Summer Institute.

Columbia Aging Center’s Dr. Ursula Staudinger presents work at the CCOHR Oral History Summer Institute

Dr. Ursula Staudinger presents at the 2017 CCOHR Oral History Summer Institute.

By Fanny Julissa García, Summer Institute Communications Coordinator

Dr. Ursula Staudinger, Founding Director of the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center and the associated International Longevity Center, presented presented a lecture and a seminar at the CCOHR 2017 Oral History Summer Institute. Dr. Staudinger is a lifespan psychologist, and her research focuses on the plasticity of the aging process and the implications it has for population aging. Her first presentation took place on June 5th and kicked off two weeks of powerful analysis and exploration on themes related to aging, lifespan psychology, and the cognitive impact of life history interviews on individuals.

The Columbia Aging Center is a co-sponsor of this year’s Institute, and Dr. Staudinger’s keynote lecture, titled, “More Years, More Life: Opportunities and Challenges of Demographic Change” put forward research she has conducted on the opportunities and challenges of a society that is characterized by longer lives, but questions whether this same society is any healthier mentally and physically.

Dr. Staudinger asked the question, “Are we capable of making use of longer lives and maintain productivity?” The answer is yes, but this requires significant investment and changes in our society. She presented the following five steps needed for a more engaged and productive aging population:

1. Health promotion and sickness prevention for all.

2. Education across lifespan for all.

3. More versatile work biographies for all.

4. Productivity through volunteering.

5. Making use of the new economy of longer lives: health, education, financial instruments, technology and infrastructure.

Her seminar, titled, “Life Review, Reminiscence and Wisdom” focused on the process of life review- a central process for oral history- from a psychological perspective. Life review is one form of reminiscence that takes more than reconstructing the past from memories. The process of life review also entails an evaluation and explanation part. The way we reconstruct our past from memory is influenced by many factors aside from what happened in the past. We need to be aware of the situational and cultural impact. Other concepts that have been linked with the notion of life review in the psychological literature are autobiographical reasoning and life reflection. She also highlighted the counter intuitive finding that it is not enough to grow old to become wise. Rather, her research shows that the last stage in life pushes to integrate the past instead of questioning it and identifying pros and cons based on which deeper insights about life can be gained.

Dr. Staudinger’s presentation and research was widely quoted at the summer institute days after she presented, and many fellows identified familiar themes in their own research, including many who are working with narrators in early stages of Alzheimer’s, and dementia.

Mary Marshall Clark, Co-Director of the CCOHR 2017 Oral History Summer Institute said the following about Dr. Staudinger’s presentations, “She taught us that the art and science of remembering are deeply interconnected and reinforce the plasticity of the mind throughout the life span, and that creative aging is not only possible but achievable.  We are so grateful for her brilliant and thoughtful approaches to the kind of memory work we often do without thinking about it so explicitly.”

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Fanny Julissa García is a recent graduate of the Oral History Master of Arts program at Columbia University. Her research focuses on the Central American Refugee Crisis and the rise of immigration detention centers in the U.S. She currently works as a social media marketing content writer for various organizations including Groundswell: Oral History for Social Change, the Columbia Oral History Master of Arts program, and the CCOHR 2017 Oral History Summer Institute.

'The Same Heart': Film Screening and Q&A

We are delighted to inform you that Len & Georgia Morris and Petra Lent McCarron will be showing their most recent film, The Same Heart, on the rights of children to live beyond poverty, on the evening of Tuesday, September 13, 2017 at the Society for Ethical Culture.

Len, Georgia, and Petra have worked with the Columbia Center for Oral History Research to produce films for the last two decades. Please join us in welcoming their latest project to New York! The Q&A session that follows will be moderated by Charlayne Hunter-Gault.

For tickets and further information, please visit the Eventbrite page.

“You Can’t Just Create a Beautiful Space. It Also Has to Feel Safe to Be There.”

A Q&A with How We Go Home editor Sara Sinclair

Voice of Witness shares an inside look into one of the newest oral history projects from Voice of Witness: How We Go Home. Sara is an OHMA alum and is currently Project Coordinator for the Columbia Center for Oral History Research's Robert Rauschenberg Oral History Project.

We’re excited to share an inside look into one of the newest oral history projects from Voice of Witness: How We Go Home.

How We Go Home will illuminate the experiences of Native peoples living on reservations in the U.S. and Canada. Narrators will describe the impacts of forced assimilation, displacement, and the human rights violations emerging from institutional problems within the reservation system, while revealing Native society’s incredible capacity for resistance, healing, and survival.

How We Go Home is one of six projects Voice of Witness is currently incubating through the VOW Story Fund, which provides oral history training, editorial guidance, and project funding to human rights storytellers in need of institutional support.

Faculty Provost Award: Transforming Oral History through Teaching Visual Literacy

Transforming Oral History Through Teaching Visual Literacy

Course: Oral History Method and Theory
Semester: Fall 2016

Mary Marshall Clark, Director of CCOHR and Co-Director of the Oral History Master of Arts program (OHMA) at Columbia, working with OHMA student Nyssa Chow, designed a proposal to the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) to use Mediathread and other software to transform the way in which oral history is taught in Clark’s Oral History Method and Theory seminar.  The CTL grant will support the purchase of video cameras, and the development of new course modules in which students will analyze the videos they produce directly from the video source: developing a new lexicon for oral history through visualizing theoretical concepts such as memory, intersubjectivity and meaning-making in the interview.  Through incorporating an analysis of gestures, facial expressions, bodily cues and the intersection of sound and image in the oral history exchange, students will develop new methodologies for analyzing the work they produce and develop innovative visual forms for sharing their knowledge with a broader public.

In October 2014, the Office of the Provost launched a Request for Proposals for Hybrid Course Redesign and Delivery. Senior faculty review committees selected projects to receive grants. Each project was chosen based on its potential to enhance teaching and learning at Columbia. The selected projects cover a broad range of disciplines and topics, from history to economics to biomedical engineering.  These projects are already exposing undergraduate and graduate students alike to partial or full flipping of the classroom, team-based and experiential learning, and just-in-time teaching.

In December 2015, the Office of the Provost announced the third Request for Proposals (click here to access the RFP page).  Instructors of courses selected will have access to the resources and support of the Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) for content development, instructional design, media production, systems integration, assessment, and project management.  Courses selected are also funded from $5,000 up to $20,000 for a one-semester period.  A key goal of this fund is to measure the effectiveness of these designs, delivery methods and learning strategies, and to improve instructional delivery and learning outcomes of Columbia University students from all disciplines.

Muriel Miguel wins Guggenheim fellowship

CCOHR was very pleased to learn that Muriel Miguel, founding member and Artistic Director of Spiderwoman Theater and a 2013 Summer Institute instructor, received a John S. Guggenheim Fellowship. Sara Sinclair, a 2013 Summer Institute Fellow, Oral History Master of Arts alum, and current Project Coordinator for CCOHR's Robert Rauschenberg Oral History Project, conducted a public interview with Muriel, which you can watch below. In this post, she reminiscences about Muriel as a storyteller.

I met Muriel Miguel in Toronto through Native Earth Performing Arts. I was an actor participating in a week long workshop of a new play that Muriel was directing. We met again in New York at the American Indian Community House almost ten years later. I had just moved to the city, wondered whether I might run into Muriel and there she was!

We got to chatting and I told that I was in the city studying oral history. She was interested in hearing more about my studies and in telling me about Spiderwoman Theater’s latest production, a play based on real Native American women’s experiences of violence.  Muriel thought there might be a way for us to work together and I was excited about that and just so happy to reconnect.

Muriel is a great storyteller. She is fun, dynamic, wise and just so fully and richly herself.  She certainly doesn’t need an interviewer to draw her out! I saw my role as more about providing the structure for her to best share her story with the Summer Institute Fellows.  I was proud to be able to facilitate our time together so that she could share her experience as an “Urban Indian” growing up in Brooklyn, New York, a narrative unfamiliar and maybe even unimagined by most.

I love Muriel, and I love that she is a part of my community in New York. We don’t speak often but somehow she always knows when to call and I’m always so moved by her love and humor when she does. I had a son in June and the night before I went into labor, Muriel called to ask how I was. She told me about how she walked her way through her own labor. Her stories give me strength.