Overview of the Oral History Interview Final Project

Students: You will conduct an oral history. 

Theme:

First, you will need to choose a theme:  pandemic/epidemic OR protests/demonstrations/marches/riots. 

Interviewee/interview subject:

Second, you will need to identify someone to interview.  This is crucial – you need to find someone who knows about and/or has experienced the issue and is prepared to do a serious and thoughtful interview with you.  Just sitting down with a roommate or friend and casually talking about the topic in jest is not acceptable.  I expect seriousness on your part and that includes your judgment in selecting an appropriate interview subject.  Trust me, it will show if you don’t. 

So, do work that will make me proud Smile, and more importantly, that you will be proud to share with your friends and family.  Think about it – you’re going to do some really important and meaningful work in your FYS class!  You are building YOUR LEGACY now through the work you do! Cool

Technical issues to consider:

You will need to record it. You are ONLY required to audio record the oral history/interview for this assignment, but you may choose to video record. I recommend you just audio record the interview as it will be easier thanks to the StoryCorps app.

Audio: If you choose to audio record the oral history interview, you MUST use the StoryCorps app because you will need to upload the oral history interview to the StoryCorps site. 

Video: If you choose, you may video record it.  If you video record the oral history interview, you will need to upload/publish it on Youtube.

URL: Regardless of whether you use StoryCorps or Youtube, in a subsequent assignment you will need to submit the URL that links directly to your oral history interview.

Metadata/classification/labeling: You also will need to provide standard information/metadata on StoryCorps or YouTube (like keywords, title, summary, etc.) so that it is classified properly and can be found by others searching for oral histories.  I will provide you with the required metadata.

Consent: Finally, regardless of the type of interview, you also will need to obtain your interviewee’s consent as this will be published on the Internet and accessible to all.  Please clear this with your interview subject BEFORE interviewing him/her. If your interviewee is not comfortable with the oral history being published, then you will need to select someone else to interview because an important part to doing this oral history final project is publishing it.  I will provide you with a Consent form which YOU and YOUR INTERVIEWEE need to complete, sign and date.  You will then scan it or take a picture of it and upload it to an assignment you will find in this module.