Registration closes Sunday 9 PM, March 29
Using the asylum interview as a case study, this workshop examines what happens when people are forced to tell their stories repeatedly in high-stakes, transactional contexts—asylum interviews, social worker intakes, medical assessments—where narratives must yield specific survival outcomes. We'll explore the fundamental differences between these extractive systems and oral history practice, and develop concrete strategies for….Read More

Join this Hop-On as organizers of the Oral History Worker Collective, Sarah Dziedzic and David Wolinsky, talk about why the Collective was founded and its broader purpose to build connections between peer practitioners. They'll highlight one of the field's resources on oral history labor––the Independent Oral History Practitioner's Toolkit, an exhaustive how-to for contract oral history work––and introduce a new companion workbook. Sarah and David will also guide attendees ….Read More

What happens when oral history becomes a tool for collective healing? In this session, we'll explore how oral history methodology can be used to create space for sacred remembering, feeling, and imagining. Drawing from three projects centering Black women leaders—a salon healing circle, an elder visioning session, and a podcast—I'll share how I've held different spaces to invite Black women to honor the wisdom in oral history and apply insight to modern life.

We'll discuss how oral history allows us to see patterns repeat and imagine something new. How moving from quick sound bites to depth becomes an act of collective suturing….Read More

Join us for our first co-working session of the new year! Bring your oral history admin, questions, project design, and/or get your release forms composed and workshopped! Optional breakout rooms for this co-working session are available for the second half of co-working to promote discussion. Free/all are welcome. Click here to register

Join us for our first co-working session of the new year! Bring your oral history admin, questions, project design, and/or get your release forms composed and workshopped! Optional breakout room for this co-working session will be a release form discussion. Free/all are welcome. Click here for registration link…

Happy New Year! Come set yourself up for an immersive course of self-study in good company for the new year. This workshop will guide all participants through the creation of a syllabus/blueprint for your very individualized delight. All medium and foci welcome. How can we bring desire and rigor to ourselves and to each other? Registration opens December 8.

A cornerstone of oral history practice, the oral history release form is a dynamic document that can address ownership, agency, care and self-care, trauma, reciprocity and consent. In this workshop, we’ll break apart the meaning, mission and elements of the release form and find ways it can support our projects and our narrators.

While thought of as a contract in other practices, we will regard the release form as a living document that holds us to what we mutually agree upon at a given juncture and gives us a solid space to return to….Read More

Oral History Summer School’s tagline is ‘Ask Better Questions,’ but how do we do this and what makes a question “good” or “bad”? In this focused workshop, we will explore questions as a cornerstone of oral history practice, specifically looking at how we can radically change relationships, archives, documentary film projects, parenting, medical practice and more by….Read More

Narrator-led. Emotional range. Shared authority. Prominent silence. Unscripted language. Tangents welcome. These are some of the characteristics of oral histories, and also some of the qualities producer/editor Sarah Geis believes make podcasts that buzz with life. Read more here…

This third hop-on session in our series of short-form online workshops will focus on field-work: how to get into the field of oral history and how to sustain a life of “fieldwork.” Come hear from Oral History Summer School Founder/Director Suzanne Snider along with colleagues Meral Agish, Sady Sullivan and others about ways to train, network, budget, earn income and sustain your oral history practice and values.

How/where does a newly trained oral historian find work? What kinds of jobs exist within the larger project of oral history? How much should/can you charge as an interviewer-for-hire? Read More….

From the oral historian that piloted the Talking White: Transcribing Black Voices workshop, comes a new workshop geared towards making unique transcription style guides that cater to your own project's needs. As always, the goal with oral history transcription is producing a useful document that honors our narrators and the intricacies of their speech. In this all-day virtual yet hands-on workshop, you'll receive a first hand step-by-step look at how the Margaret Walker Center Oral History Transcription Style Guide was created to do just this. Read more…

We are pleased to announce an upcoming public panel event on Sunday, December 17 (12 PM - 1:30 PM) as part of our longer 3-day workshop, The Oral History Manuscript: Writing from Oral History. Read more here…

Join Oral History Summer School for its second short-form online workshop in a new workshop sequence we're offering throughout 2023-24. This time around, we'll bring our famous Listening Exercises to participants. Come learn about listening and yourself in a fully interactive session. Read more here…

In this virtual song collection workshop, Oral History Summer School Director Suzanne Snider will guide participants through an exploration of historic and contemporary song collection practices before inviting participants to try them out in a supportive environment. This workshop involves presentation, discussion and practice (Yes, maybe a little singing!) with an emphasis on coming together to tell stories. Snider will discuss the ways that song collection can be an especially powerful invitation for the very young, the very old, for those dealing with memory loss and/or brain injuries… Read more…

[VIDEO RECORDING OF WORKSHOP AVAILABLE]: Oral History Summer School’s tagline is ‘Ask Better Questions,’ but how do we do this and what makes a question “good” or “bad”? In this focused workshop, we will explore questions as a cornerstone of oral history practice, specifically looking at how we can radically change relationships, archives, documentary film projects, parenting, medical practice and more by….Read More