In the summer of 2020, OHMA launched a public workshop series exploring anti-oppression and decolonial approaches to oral history. The instructors from that series collaborated with us to curate the next round of workshops, which begins March 20th.

Oral history has a strong tradition as a progressive practice, focused on amplifying marginalized voices not typically given powerful platforms to speak in public. Oral historians have documented the stories of struggles for justice around the world, and at times have participated in those struggles. At the same time, as a field oral history has excluded Indigenous people and practices from the legitimacy we have so laboriously built. Leadership in our organizations and institutions has been predominantly white, even while people of color have played key roles and invested their time and energy in building these institutions.

In this series, we share visions for oral history in which people of color - their knowledge, skills, practices and voices - are at the center of our practice. This is not a diversity approach, in which our field remains white-led but invites some people of color in. It is an anti-oppression approach, in which we reorient our work to challenge structural oppression actively, expecting that that will change our work and our field in deep ways. We invite you to learn, grow, imagine and be challenged.

This series is co-sponsored by OHMA and the Oral History Association.

SERIES AT A GLANCE

March 20th, 2021, 1:00 - 4:00 PM
Placing the Narrator at the Center: Design Co-Created Oral History Projects
Nairy AbdElShafy

April 23rd, 2021, 3:00 - 5:00 PM
Oral History: A Working Praxis of Critical Care and Relationship-Building Pt. 1
Crystal Mun-Hye Baik 백문혜

April 30th, 2021, 3:00 - 5:00 PM
Oral History: A Working Praxis of Critical Care and Relationship-Building Pt. 2
Crystal Mun-Hye Baik 백문혜

May 13th, 2021, 2:00 - 4:00 PM
A Public Interview with Brent Stonefish
conducted by Francine D. Spang-Willis

May 27th, 2021, 1:00 - 4:00 PM
Equity Budgeting: Budgets for Economic Justice
Sarah Dziedzic and Jess Lamar Reece Holler