CCOHR and the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics (INCITE) are pleased to announce its 2014 Oral History Institute, “Second Generation Memories and Stories,” to be held June 16-27, 2014 at Columbia University in New York City. The program will explore the ways in which memories are formed and transmitted through family, cultural, political and social frames and experiences. Oral history has been a central methodology in exploring global themes of identity and post-memory through second-generation stories of immigration, migration, poverty, trauma and genocide, displacement and exile. Oral history also provides a setting for intimate exchanges between families, communities and cultures in a way that preserves and secures local and indigenous knowledge across generations, cultures and ethnicities: engendering individual and social resilience.

We encourage applicants to use the Institute to explore a broad range of applications of second-generation oral history research in contemporary contexts and fields including public health and medicine, immigration studies (including the impact of post-9/11 US policies on immigrant communities), sociology and social science more generally. The program will include presentations on how scholars, museums and memorials have used second-generation oral histories, and testimony, in ways that are crucial to illuminating forgotten or misunderstood experiences. The Institute will also include practical workshops in digital storytelling, interviewing and editing.

Core faculty included:

• Mary Marshall Clark, Director of the Columbia Center for Oral History Research and co-director of the Oral History Master of Arts Program at the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics of Columbia University;

• Peter Bearman, Director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics and co-director of the Oral History Master of Arts Program;

• Doug Boyd, Director of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries;

• Alessandro Portelli, Professor of Anglo-American Literature at the University of Rome-La Sapienza;

• Amy Starecheski, Associate Director of the Oral History Master of Arts Program at the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics of Columbia University;

• Ronald J. Grele, Director Emeritus of the Columbia Center for Oral History;

• Linda Shopes, Former President of the U.S. Oral History Association, Freelance Editor and Consultant in Oral and Public History.

CCOH staff, students from the Oral History Master of Arts Program (OHMA), and others who have worked in the archive will enrich our discussions with their interpretations.

Education & Training