Methods for Collecting Oral Histories Amidst a Crisis

Abstract

ABSTRACT Our goal in this project was to analyze past methodologies of oral history practitioners recording interviewees after traumatic events, which we define as widespread human-made and natural crises. The current COVID-19 pandemic and the reticence that some institutions have shown in engaging with oral history programs due to potential traumatic injury to participants influenced our objective. By examining a broad sample of cases, triangulating our data research tools, and engaging with oral history practitioners currently in the field, we hope to generate a responsible template for documenting the lived experiences of our current, extraordinary times. We studied oral history interviews with participants that ranged from the Rwandan genocide and Japanese American internment to those displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Ultimately, we found a need for more accurate community representation, unintuitive interview methodologies to positive outcomes and misconceptions around historical distance, or the amount of time between the traumatic event and the oral history interview, in academic standards.