Southwest Oral History Association

Join us for a discussion of conducting and using remote interviews and oral histories. Dr. Caryll Batt Dziedziak and Dr. Summer Cherland will share their experiences conducting and processing interviews online during the COVID-19 pandemic. This workshop will include a robust discussion of concerns, benefits, and useful technologies when it comes to this work. We hope you will join us to share your own perspectives.

This workshop is being offered at no cost. We hope you consider that SOHA is a 501c3 non-profit. Please consider becoming a member of our and donate to our organization here: bit.ly/supportSOHA. Thank you!

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Dr. Farina King, SOHA Vice President, has launched a Diné Doctor History Syllabus that she is developing and working on continually to share and feature materials related to Navajo histories of disease and healing. The syllabus includes a section on oral histories, stories, recommended sources, and resources in support of Diné communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. If folks have any suggestions or come across sources, resources, or any helpful information for this project, please let Dr. King know. Ahéhee’! Learn more at https://farinaking.com/dinedoctorhistorysyllabus/.

Dalena Sanderson-Hunter is a Librarian/Archivist for Los Angeles Communities and Cultures in the UCLA Library Special Collections. She began serving as SOHA Secretary in January 2020.

1. How did you become involved in SOHA?

I first became involved in SOHA in 2009 when I was invited to join the conference planning committee. It was a pleasurable and eye-opening experience to work with so many dedicated oral historians. At that conference I planned a tour of Leimert Park and a screening of the documentary about Leimert Park. After being a member for several years and presenting at a couple of conferences I was invited to run for secretary. I was excited to work with the other officers and plan an event for graduate students and new oral historians. While COVID-19 has forced us to postpone our in person meeting, I hope we can find new ways to interact and share our work with each other.

Continue reading “An Interview with Dalena Sanderson-Hunter, SOHA Secretary” →

The members of this organization are among those that seek to give a voice to those that experienced history just by living their lives . . .

-Teagan Dreyer

My name is Teagan Dreyer, a graduate student at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and my involvement with SOHA was completely by chance. At NSU I took a class taught by Dr. Farina King and one of the texts for this course was her book Earth Memory Compass. This text looked at the boarding school experiences of Navajo Peoples, and included a lot of oral history, focusing on the individuals that went through a journey that was complex and not as simple as had been presented to me in the past. Being from Oklahoma, a Native American, and my father having worked at a boarding school that still serves Native American students, I connected with Dr. King’s research. She allowed me to accompany her on an excursion to the Navajo Reservation and gave me the opportunity to meet community members who had personal ties to more research and oral history she continued to do. Seeing my interest she introduced me to SOHA, and from her encouragement I was voted the Student Representative and was able to be put on a panel in the upcoming conference with her talking about this experience, along with how it inspired me in the direction of my thesis.

Continue reading “Introducing SOHA Graduate Student Representative, Teagan Dreyer” →

Image above: Jennifer Keil and Cindy Keil at SOHA at OHA 2019

1. Jennifer Keil, how did you become involved in SOHA?

I presented at the 2013 Oral History Association meeting in Oklahoma City organized by Cora Granata at the Center for Oral and Public History with a panel of graduate students chaired by Alessandro Portelli. Karen Harper, SOHA Past-President, invited our panel to present at Tempe, Arizona the following spring. During these years, I realized my passion for the spoken work and preservation techniques to make it accessible to communities online. As a graduate student, I instituted a community oral history project at the Balboa Island Museum with Cindy Keil, SOHA California Delegate. We founded 70 Degrees in order to facilitate historical consulting and conduct oral history interviews. We led a workshop at the 2017 Tempe SOHA conference.

Continue reading “An Interview with SOHA President Jennifer Keil” →

Mary Gordon has been interviewing interesting people since a National Park Service anthropologist, Phil Holmes,  suggested she interview Charlie Cooke, who some considered a hereditary Chumash chief.  Phil referred to that work as oral tradition. In the same time frame, she interviewed many people on her cable TV show and as part of her responsibilities for a major  corporation.  Looking back, she wondered , Was this oral history?  Well, aspects were.  One day, Linda Valois, then managing  archives for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, suggested she attend a SOHA conference.  She did, found it welcoming and certainly worthwhile.  One of her first reactions was, Am I an oral historian? She enjoyed meeting  SOHA members, listening to their presentations, and talking with them at lunch and dinners out.  Well, she said to herself, Maybe I am an oral historian.  With her published biography about Charlie Cooke and all the lessons learned from that project, she began giving presentations herself.  The first was a dramatization from Charlie’s story working with Julie Little Thunder.  That punctuated the fact for her that not all historians are the same, that we all have much to learn from each other, and that she could fit in. Next she wrote a family business history and started giving workshops based on that experience from venues as diverse as an NPS amphitheater, to bookstores, to community center classroom settings.

Continue reading “SOHA 2020 Spotlight: Mary Gordon” →

Ryan Morini, SOHA 2020 Conference Co-Chair, describes his involvement with SOHA and oral history:

I was drawn to oral history before knowing much about it formally; shortly after I started grad school at the University of Florida, I started learning about Black history in Gainesville from people in the historic 5th Avenue/Pleasant Street neighborhood. When Paul Ortiz arrived at the University of Florida (UF) and became director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program (SPOHP), I continued my work more formally through SPOHP’s African American History Project. Around the same time, I started my dissertation research with Western Shoshone communities in Nevada, and it was again impossible to know meaningful histories or really work with communities without listening directly both to people’s firsthand experiences and the oral traditions passed down through families.

Continue reading “SOHA Spotlight: Ryan Morini, SOHA 2020 Conference Co-Chair” →