Instructor: Alissa Rae Funderburk
Saturday, January 22, 11 AM to 6 PM ET/10 AM to 5 PM CST

Alissa Rae Funderburk will be presenting "Talking White," a workshop that explores useful concepts in the transcription of oral history to help us more accurately portray the voice of our narrators. The English language is inextricably linked to a history of colonialism and has been used in America to delegitimize the voices and agency of Black people (from forced illiteracy during slavery, to voter suppression during the Civil Rights Era, to even the halls of academia today). This workshop aims to change the way we think of the transcript as a record and the way we consider dialect and the importance of AAVE (African American Vernacular English) to recording American history and culture. We will look at linguistics, language justice, literature, and much more as we attempt to discern how best to preserve the voices of our narrators through the interview process and beyond.

This is an expanded version of a workshop Alissa Rae presented to our Oral History Summer School June 2021 Intensive Cohort, and is open to all.

Alissa Rae Funderburk is the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Oral Historian for the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi. In her position, she maintains an oral history archive dedicated to the preservation, interpretation, and dissemination of African American history and culture. Inspired by her work at the center, she has developed a workshop on the complexities of transcribing Black voices that she first presented for the OHMA Anti-Oppression Oral History Training Workshops last summer. She is a native New Yorker and holds an MA in Oral History as well as a BA in Anthropology from Columbia University.

Tuition

Standard Tuition - $250

Institutional Tuition/Supporter -$275
For students whose organization, university, or employer is paying their tuition. We ask those with institutional support to pay a slightly higher tuition to help us offer more subsidized spaces throughout the year.

Discount Tuition - $200 [Limited Spaces]

These spaces are reserved as part of an equity initiative to support more BIPOC and marginalized voices at the table and in the field. If you are eligible based on these criteria and cannot attend at the standard tuition rate, please select this option.