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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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.

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

WORKSHOP: Oral History: Research, Revision, Collaboration, Transformation
Instructor: Suzanne Snider
Location: Harvard Graduate School of Design

Please note: This workshop is closed to registration

This workshop will serve to continue the evening presentation of 3/25, offering an interactive, hands-on introduction to oral history as an ethical interview practice through a series of short exercises and prompts. What makes oral history different from other interview styles and traditions and how might we apply these best practices in our lives and work? Oral History Summer School founder/director Suzanne Snider will guide participants through concepts and exercises seeking to integrate ideas—in the act of conversation––from fields including psychoanalysis, trauma studies, feminist theory, and disability studies. We will honor a range of motives, including but not limited to: organizing, amending the record, creating persuasive media and brokering difficult conversations.

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...Read More

Instructors: Suzanne Snider
Location: Verso Books Loft 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, New York
Tuition: Sliding Scale. Read more, here

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, trauma, 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, here

Instructors: Suzanne Snider with guest instructors Ry Garcia-Sampson and Daniel Cogan. Additional collaborators tba
Location: Solaris, 360 Warren Street, Hudson, New York
Tuition: $1500*

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 'Oral History & Care,' as led by MD/MPH candidate Ry Garcia-Sampson (Improving Health and Healthcare: A Trans Oral History Project) and Palliative Care.......Read More

In this special workshop for teachers working with children ages three to five, we will explore the relationship between oral history best practices and pedagogical ideals in the early childhood classroom. Specifically, we'll emphasize the use of listening, open-ended questions, and silence.
 
How can oral history training help us to identify our strengths, weaknesses, and preferences as speakers and as listeners? How can we respectfully inhabit our role as teacher/interviewer, using our questions to invite mutual exploration and greater understanding?.....Read More
 

This two-part workshop covers the fundamental theories and practices of oral history through mini-presentations, exercises and group discussion. Woven into our topical discussions––of ethics, motives, power, individual/collective memory and trauma––will be instruction on Project Design and methodology, including technical tutorials around recording and preserving interviews. We will discuss oral history as a possible form of ....Read More

This immersive one-day oral history training weaves together methodology, practice, archiving, ethics and a short presentation on experimental outcomes and multimedia projects rooted in oral history.

*This workshop was organized in collaboration with Vassar Refugee Solidarity and Creative Arts Across Disciplines

This immersive workshop is a rigorous introduction to the field of oral history, organized in collaboration with the National Public Housing Museum as part of an effort to establish an aural history/future of public housing in the voices of public housing residents and housing community members.

Over the course of 8 days, we’ll cover interview techniques, project design, and recording tutorials, plus sessions dedicated to ethics, trauma, advocacy, archives, and other special topics. Participants will be conducting interviews throughout the week. With our focus on oral history, public housing and the emergent museum. Read More....

Instructors: Suzanne Snider and guest instructors Sarita Daftary (El Puente) and Walis Johnson (Red Line Archive)

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 Hudson workshop is a rigorous introduction to the field of oral history. Over the course of 8 days, we’ll cover interview techniques, project design, and recording tutorials, plus sessions dedicated to ethics, trauma, advocacy, archives, and other related topics. This workshop is ...Read More

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...Read More

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 will explore these known traditions (and invent our own) alongside more obscure genres, dividing our days between discussions, writing exercises, screenings, select readings and optional workshop time. Oral history excels at complicating the narrative. How can we....Read More»»

The Art of the Interview: Oral History for Everyone, a one-night workshop

A collaboration between Hudson River Exchange and Oral History Summer School

Calling all audiophiles, artists, writers, family historians and the generally curious: During this three-hour workshop, we’ll cover the art of interviewing through interactive exercises and discussion, concluding with a multimedia presentation that surveys a wide range of work rooted in oral history principles/practice: sound installation, poetry, radio ballads, audio tours, museum exhibits, and podcasts.  Participants will have a chance to.....Read More»»