2024 Oral History Association Annual Meeting

Graduate students and staff from the Eastern Michigan University Oral History Program dissect the progress of the program as well as the rationales and decisions behind the occasional and sudden veerings from the original strategic plan. An archivist who never expected to become an oral historian, an oral historian who never expected to be a teacher, and graduate students who have increasingly determined the overall direction of the program will discuss their progression from good talkers to good listeners.

ABSTRACT:  Since its inception in 2018, the Eastern Michigan University Oral History Program (OHP) has gone from a single, self-trained graduate student to a campus wide, community-partnered, student-driven initiative to capture the recollections of community members on and off campus. In 2021, the EMU OHP debuted the EMU Aerie, a mobile oral history recording booth designed to eliminate physical barriers to campus that often discourage potential narrators from in-person interviewing. Three years into the Aerie experiment, the Oral History Program has seen itself on the road and embedded in various cultural events, curriculums, and fundraising events, fostering and sustaining relationships with SE Michigan residents of all ages, genders and cultural backgrounds. However, the road to the OHP has not always been barrier-free. While program coordinator Matt Jones and University Archivist Alexis Braun Marks have worked in tandem to effectively empower students to come face to face with the history they are documenting, thorny issues of empathy vs. exploitation, trauma-based interviews, narrator end-of-life considerations, and discussions of who tells whose story are always at the forefront of daily operations amongst an increasingly diverse set of student interviewers. Jones and two graduate students will highlight the projects, predicaments, curriculums and conundrums of an oral history program struggling to bridge the stories of the past with the listeners of the future.