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The Course

Dartmouth Black Lives was taught for the first time in Fall 2021 by Professor Julia Rabig and Dr. Bryan Winston. Students immersed themselves in the theory and methods of oral history, the archives of Dartmouth College, and late twentieth-century African American history. Each student completed an interview with an alum and embedded the interview and transcript in a digital exhibit examining themes from their narrators’ lives. Students selected the themes, found archival sources to contextualize them, and designed the exhibits. Click here to view these exhibits.

Course Description

This course equips students with research methods, critical frameworks, and interview skills to document the lives of Black alums and contribute to an archive of oral sources on Black history at Dartmouth. Students will be immersed in the theory and practice of oral history, a field in which historians conduct collaborative interviews with narrators to create new records of past events. Oral history interviews are used to explore both the lives of individuals and the histories of communities and institutions. This method offers access to voices and perspectives that have been excluded from, marginalized within, or altogether absent from conventional archives. For this reason, oral history has long been of particular value to scholars of African American history.

In preparation for conducting their own interviews, students will study major developments in twentieth-century African American history that may have impacted the lives of their narrators. Students will develop archival skills at Rauner Library and complete research that will bring depth and specificity to their understanding of this historical context.

Throughout the course, students and professors will thoughtfully analyze our own positionality in relationship to narrators; the institutions in which we work; and the structures of power that have shaped them historically and in our contemporary moment. In consultation with guest experts in the field of oral history, students will consider how the primary sources they create in collaboration with their narrators raise complex questions about subjectivity, race, memory, and historical perspective. Oral history in this way cultivates a reflective approach to interviewing that is widely applicable to liberal arts inquiry. 

In the culminating assignments for the course, students will conduct their own oral history interviews, transcribe them, and audit them for accuracy. They will learn to use the Omeka S digital platform for a final class exhibit that incorporates interviews and archival research.

Course Learning Objectives

  • Learn about the emergence and evolution of oral history as a subfield within the discipline of history;
  • Become familiar with the use of oral history methods in African American Studies;
  • Learn about the theory of oral history, especially as it pertains to narrative, memory, and subjectivity;
  • Understand one’s own positionality in relationship to narrators, our institutions, and the structures of power that shape them;
  • Learn about the ethical and legal responsibilities of oral history interviewers, as well as the responsibilities of those who create and manage oral history projects, collections, and exhibits;
  • Learn how to conduct an oral history interview, using strategies and techniques based on current best practices in the field;
  • Interpret oral history sources in the context of a digital exhibit that incorporates other relevant primary and secondary source materials.

Select Readings

  • History Matters, “What is Oral History?”
  • http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/oral/what.html
  • Willoughby Anderson, “The Presence of the Past: Iconic Moments and the Politics of Interviewing in Birmingham,” in Claire Potter and Renee Romano, Doing Recent History (University of Georgia Press, 2012), 139-54.
  • Kathryn Anderson and Dana C. Jack, “Learning to Listen: Interview Techniques and Analyses” in The Oral History Reader, 3rd ed., edited by Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson (New York: Routledge, 2016), 179-192.
  • Stefan Bradley, Upending the Ivory Tower: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Ivy League (New York University Press, 2018)
  • Glen A. Cruthers and Tracy E. K’Meyer, “‘If I see some of this in writing, I’m going to shoot you:’ Reluctant Narrators, Taboo Topics, and the Ethical Dilemmas of the Oral Historian,” Oral History Review Vol. 34, Issue 1 (Winter/Spring 2007): 71-93.
  • Ashley Farmer, “Archiving while Black,” Black Perspectives (African American Intellectual History Society), June 18, 2018.
  • Daniel R. Kerr, “Allan Nevins Is Not My Grandfather: The Roots of Radical Oral History Practice in the United States.” Oral History Review 43, no. 2 (Summer/Fall 2016): 367-391.
  • Mary Larson, “Steering Clear of the Rocks: A Look at the Current State of Oral History Ethics in the Digital Age.” OHR 40, no. 1, (Winter/Spring 2013): 36–49.
  • Jan L. Peterson, “The Intersection of Oral History and the Role of White Researchers in Cross-Cultural Contexts,” Educational Foundations (Summer-Fall 2008).
  • Alessandro Portelli, “What Makes Oral History Different,” in Alessandro Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History (State University of New York Press, 1991), 45-58.
  • Alessandro Portelli, “History-Telling and Time: An Example from Kentucky,” The Oral History Review 20 (No. 1/2), 1992, pp. 51-66.
  • Michelle Purdy, Transforming the Elite: Black Students and the Desegregation of Private Schools (University of North Carolina Press, 2019)
  • Andrew Vinãles, “Varones in the Archive: A Queer Oral History Analysis with Two Black Puerto Rican Gay Men, CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies 30 (2), 2018.
  • Rhonda Y. Williams, “‘I’m a Keeper of Information’: History—Telling and Voice,” The Oral History Review 28, No. 1 (Winter - Spring, 2001): 41-63.
  • Barbara Shircliffe, “We got the best of that world:” A Case Study for the Study of Nostalgia in the Oral History of School Segregation,” Oral History Review 28/2 (Summer/Fall 2001): 59-84.