Roots and Branches of Oral History

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Methods, Theory, and Interpretation is an ideation laboratory, a play space, a workshop, a space to think

about our practice alongside cross-disciplinary perspectives and inquiry—from and E. Patrick Johnson on

identity and performance, to Judith Butler on Precarious Life and Grievable Life, to Alessandro Portelli’s

emphasis on the dialogic, to Ariella Aïsha Azoulay imagining “an otherwise” in the form of Potential

Histories—we will engage ways that these fields/theories might inform our oral history practice. This

class is an invitation to complicate our questions, trouble our certainties, and engage in ever-evolving

work of defining our individual approach(es), to oral history theory, practice, and interpretation.

Through readings, interview listening assignments, and workshop sessions, we will consider the space of

the interview as a site of interpretation and potentiality. What (more) is it possible to hear in the oral

history? And, what might interrupt that hearing? What (more) is it possible to articulate in the oral

history? And, what might interrupt that articulation? What constitutes a ‘life’?