For many of us, family is the obvious—and sometimes most complicated—place to start our work as oral historians. In this workshop, participants will learn how to use oral history to document and preserve their family stories. We’ll discuss common challenges: convincing your family to participate, delving into sensitive subjects and secrets, and working with interviewees who may suffer from memory loss. We’ll also discuss the potential for oral history to repair and transform relationships. Read more here…

Project Design is a dynamic phase of oral history practice, giving oral historians a chance to discipline their thinking, address ethical challenges, identify sites for potential collaboration, assess their resources, define “success,” and brainstorm potential future uses beyond the archive. Read more here…

Oral history excels at complicating the narrative. How can we preserve and deliver these complex narratives when moving from speech to print? How can we make adequate space for our narrators’ voices and our own (authorial) voice? What does it mean to write in first person with someone else’s words? What is an oral history book? Read more here…

This two-day hands-on workshop––open to all––is based on our popular 10-day intensive, covering oral history theory, method and practice. Over the course of the two-day workshop, we'll address interview techniques, recording tutorials, ethics, memory, annotation and experimental outcomes. Read more…

Oral History Summer School is back in session for our second Oral History Intensive in Residence at Sylvan Motor Lodge. Come all ye budding oral historians, media makers, advocates and others who wish to make of use of oral history in your practices. This immersive upstate New York workshop is a rigorous introduction to the field of oral history. Over the course of 4 days, we’ll cover interview techniques, project design, and recording tutorials, plus sessions dedicated to ethics, trauma, advocacy, archives, and other related topics. Read more…

Oral History Summer School is back in session—this time in Portland, ME—at Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. Come all ye budding oral historians, media makers, advocates and others who wish to make of use of oral history in your practices. This immersive upstate New York workshop is a rigorous introduction to the field of oral history. Over the course of 4 days, we’ll cover interview techniques, project design, and recording tutorials, plus sessions dedicated to ethics, trauma, advocacy, archives, and other related topics. Read more…

Oral History Summer School is back in session with our first in-person workshop since the pandemic. Come all ye budding oral historians, media makers, advocates and others who wish to make of use of oral history in your practices. This immersive upstate New York workshop is a rigorous introduction to the field of oral history. Over the course of 4 days, we’ll cover interview techniques, project design, and recording tutorials, plus sessions dedicated to ethics, trauma, advocacy, archives, and other related topics. Read more…

In this specialized Project Design workshop, OHSS director and founder Suzanne Snider will train a project team from Middlebury College and Kolot Chayeinu for an oral history project of Kolot Chayeinu, a non-denominational Jewish congregation in Brooklyn, NY. This day-long training includes mini-presentations, conversation, small group exercises, and supportive “lab time” during which participants will work with Project Design prompts and workshop their ideas-in-progress for feedback. Read more…

This two-day hands-on workshop––open to all––is based on our popular 10-day intensive, covering oral history theory, method and practice. Over the course of the two-day workshop, we'll address interview techniques, recording tutorials, ethics, memory, annotation and experimental outcomes. Read More…

This two-day hands-on workshop––open to all––is based on our popular 10-day intensive, covering oral history theory, method and practice. Over the course of the two-day workshop, we'll address interview techniques, recording tutorials, ethics, memory, annotation and experimental outcomes. Read More…

This mini-intensive is based on our popular foundational workshop––covering oral history theory, methods and practice––but is designed more specifically to support training among colleagues and collaborators who wish to directly apply the training during the workshop, and to establish networks among organizations approaching common questions. Read more…

This two-day hands-on workshop––open to all––is based on our popular 10-day intensive, covering oral history theory, method and practice. Over the course of the two-day workshop, we'll address interview techniques, recording tutorials, ethics, memory, annotation and experimental outcomes. Read more…

Instructors: Suzanne Snider + Guest Instructors Nichole Canuso, Sarita Daftary, Alissa Rae Funderburk

Come all ye budding oral historians, artists, advocates, and researchers who wish to make use of oral history in your practices. This immersive summer workshop is a rigorous introduction to the field of Oral History. Over the course of ten days, we’ll cover interview techniques, project design, recording tutorials for online and in-person recording, and ethics, along with special topics related to the field. Read more.

This two-day hands-on workshop––open to all––is based on our popular 10-day intensive, covering oral history theory, method and practice. Over the course of the weekend, we'll address interview techniques, recording tutorials, ethics, memory, annotation and experimental outcomes. Read more.

Join us for our first 5-day foundational training! We’re excited to bring this work to a new location (Portland, Maine) in partnership/collaboration with the audio production company Future Projects (Josie Holtzman, Isaac Kestenbaum) at their Portland studio. This workshop will cover ethics, interview techniques and recording tutorials as well as sessions on memory, trauma, project design and archives…Read More

Come all ye budding oral historians, artists, advocates, and researchers who wish to make of use of oral history in your practices. This immersive summer workshop is a rigorous introduction to the field of Oral History. Over the course of ten days, we’ll cover interview techniques, project design, recording tutorials, and ethics, along with special topics related to the field. This is a great opportunity to jump-start a project in a supportive environment… Read More

We invite you and your kiddo(s) to experience listening, sounding, moving, imagining, composing, and dreaming together during this 4-session experiment in intergenerational Deep Listening. Deep Listening® is an evolving practice founded by avant garde composer Pauline Oliveros: through playful, body-affirming awareness exercises and sonic meditations we will tune in to ourselves and the planet and have fun…Read more.

Sady Sullivan in collaboration with Oral History Summer School invites you and your kiddo(s) to experience listening, sounding, moving, imagining, composing, and dreaming together during this 4-session experiment in intergenerational Deep Listening. Deep Listening® is an evolving practice founded by avant garde composer Pauline Oliveros: through playful, body-affirming awareness exercises and sonic meditations we will tune in to ourselves and the planet and have fun.

Neurodiversity celebrated - Sensory friendly

Tuesdays & Thursdays in May via Zoom

May 21 3pm - 4pm ET
May 26 3pm - 4pm ET
May 28 3pm - 4pm ET
June 2 3pm - 4pm ET……..Read More Here…

Oral History, a Queer Art will follow the course of our usual immersive workshops by offering foundational oral history training--theory, method, practice-- while inviting exploration into the way that oral history values and theory are arguably queer and/or well-positioned to support emergent complex queer narratives. This workshop will also seize upon the history and abundance of queer oral history projects, approaching this canon as both case study of insider history and as inspiration for new projects ….. Read More

Instructors: Suzanne Snider
Location: Verso Books Loft 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, New York
Tuition: Sliding Scale (See Below), $325 - $525.

This hands-on workshop––open to all––is based on our popular 10-day intensive, covering oral history theory, method and practice. Over the course of the weekend, we'll address interview techniques, recording tutorials, ethics, memory, annotation and experimental outcomes. Come all ye documentarians, journalists, artists, media-makers, educators and those looking to learn new things in good company. No experience necessary. . . . Read More

Instructors: Suzanne Snider
Location: Solaris, 360 Warren Street, Hudson, New York
Tuition: $850 + $25 materials fee

In this writing and oral history workshop, students experiment with a range of literary forms that use oral history as both source material and text. Monologues, oral narratives, documentary theater, and oral tone poetry are among the traditions already defined at the intersection of writing and oral history. We'll explore these known traditions (and/or invent our own) dividing our days between discussions, writing exercises, screenings, select readings and optional workshop time.

Oral history excels at complicating the narrative. How can writers preserve and deliver the same complexity? How can we....Read More»»

Instructors: Suzanne Snider with guest instructor Todd Shalom
Location: Solaris, 360 Warren Street, Hudson, New York
Tuition: $1375 + $25 materials fee

Come all ye budding oral historians, artists, advocates, and researchers who wish to make of use of oral history in your practices. This immersive summer workshop is a rigorous introduction to the field of Oral History. Over the course of twelve days, we’ll cover interview techniques, project design, recording tutorials, and ethics, along with special topics related to the field. This is a great opportunity to jump-start a project in a supportive environment, or to get this training under your belt for future projects with the benefit of deadlines and critique. Participants will be conducting interviews throughout the week. No experience necessary. This year's workshop will include special sessions on .......Read More

Oral History Intensive Workshop with Suzanne Snider
Location: University of Chicago, Art History Department
Instructor: Suzanne Snider
This workshop is closed to registration

The interview is an increasingly common mode of art historical research. Conversations with artists, studio assistants, curators, conservators, and technical or materials experts are a crucial complement to textual and object-based research, particularly when investigating recent histories and marginalized practices. Whether we publish these interviews as standalone texts or as evidence in our dissertations, books, and articles, we are contributing to a new historical record. The prevalence of this practice stands in stark contrast to the absence of practical training and best practices for conducting oral history interviews, as well as a lack of conceptual inquiry into the interview as a form.

As part of the Art History department’s student-run series Speaking of Art: Artist Interviews in Scholarship and Practice, Suzanne Snider, founder/director of Oral History Summer School, will be leading an Oral History Intensive Workshop in April 2019…..Read More, here