Peter La Chapelle, Professor of History at Nevada State College, conducts his workshop: The Videotaped Mock Interview as a Practice for Conducting Actual Oral Histories
In this panel, David Baird (Professor, School of Architecture, UNLV), Steve Clarke (Director, UNLV Downtown Design Center), and Diego Alvarez (Researcher, UNLV Downtown Design Center) focuses on three ways designers can utilize narrative or storytelling in the design process. The first involves generating a narrative as a conceptual framework to organize decision-making within the design methodology. The second is developing spaces that support the active development of narratives by the users. Lastly, narratives can be used to better understand the context within which designers operate. These three approaches will be introduced with visuals highlighting a few funded community-based design projects through UNLV’s DDC (Downtown Design Center) and includes a conversation with 2 to 3 students that participated in these projects.
Liz Warren (South Mountain Community College, Storytelling Institute) and Kyle Mitchell {Navajo} (South Mountain Community College, Storytelling Institute), professors across disciplines provide their perspectives on storytelling, oral history, and teaching. Faculty from South Mountain Community College in southern Arizona explore the local and the global impacts of collecting stories, training students to ask the right questions, and sharing narratives. Each provides their own interpretation on the overlaps of storytelling and oral history, and will share how the power of the narrative shapes their approaches both in the classroom and in life.
Alexa Irizarry, Isabella Hulsizer, Alyssa Briana Ruiz, Lerman Montoya Hermosillo, and Edwin Valenti, all Arizona State University undergraduates, used oral history to highlight resilience and build unity. With oral history accounts, undergraduate students unearthed the marginalization of specific disadvantaged groups while showcasing the ways in which people overcame laws and imposition of sovereignty. This panel will discuss the ways in which students’ use of archival research and oral history enabled them to create and showcase an exhibit over the course of a single semester.
Southwest Oral History Association 