This listening session will generate conversations about how undergraduates learn to collect, interpret, document, and circulate the stories of marginalized voices from on-and-off campus communities. Audio excerpts from interviews with student athletes and adults in substance-use recovery will be presented by undergraduate researchers and their professors, opening discussions about student engagement, retention, and the ethical implications of collecting such material. ABSTRACT: This listening session will generate conversations about how undergraduates learn to collect, interpret, document, and circulate the stories of marginalized voices from on-and-off campus communities. Audio excerpts from interviews with student athletes and adults in substance-use recovery will be presented by undergraduate researchers and their professors, opening discussions about student engagement, retention, and the ethical implications of collecting such material. Two students from an underfunded state university will describe ongoing oral history projects that culminate in campus and community events, speaking to national issues like traumatic brain injury among athletes and substance-use disorder. Two professors will offer perspectives on successfully integrating cultural awareness through cross-disciplinary projects into existing general education and creative writing curricula. These projects allow students to understand the historical value of both campus and local communities linked to the present construction of narrative, institutional and autobiographical. As an explicit act of writing the self, autobiography is both personal and communal, extending from the interview subjects to the undergraduate interviewers, helping everyone understand how collecting stories from the past and present impacts the future. As one undergraduate interviewer noted, “Without the tools to cope with substance use, without having built up resilience to temptation, and without the support of his community, the recurrence of my father’s substance use is no longer a mystery to ponder.” For this student the efficacy of community engagement changed her relationship with her own family and the future. Panelists will share an interactive poster linked to audio excerpts and a hand-bound anthology of interviews to encourage audience participation. During the conversation portion student and faculty presenters will offer a list of challenges they faced—ethical, curricular, and procedural—so audience participants may engage in brainstorming and discussion about paths for creating and/or refining their own oral history projects with undergraduates in the future.
