Oral history report

Assignment: Your main project in HIS 146, which will take up much of the second half of the semester, is to plan
and conduct an oral history and use it as the basis for an 8-10 page paper analyzing your subject’s life and placing
it in historical context. The project is broken down into several steps, detailed below.
Note that the paper resulting from this assignment will be an analytical essay, NOT a biography or life story.
This means that you will examine this oral history as a source on U.S. women’s history, placing it in context.
Therefore, in addition to drawing on course readings, you must locate and use at least two primary source and
three secondary sources (articles or books) that are relevant to your subject’s life and will help you to
contextualize and interpret it. Our library session in March will help you locate these.
Step 1: Choosing a Subject: You will need to interview a woman who is at least 65 years old and who has lived
in the U.S. for at least 20 years at some point. Potential subjects might include a relative, family friend, or
someone you know through work, school, church, or a community organization. After getting her permission and
obtaining some basic information in a pre-interview, you will hand in basic information on your subject (age,
places lived, family and work history, etc.), along with a brief statement about why you think she will be an
interesting subject and what issues in or areas of her life you plan to focus on.
Step 2: Preparing for the Interview: Before conducting the interview you should prepare a list of 15-20 open-
ended questions arranged around specific themes you want to cover during the interview. You may not get to all
of these, but want to be prepared for wherever the interview leads. General themes might include: childhood and
family; education; dating; marriage; parenting; homemaking; child-raising; work; political opinions; changes she
has witnessed in her community, workplace, and/or the country; what kinds of transformations in women’s lives
she has seen and what she thinks of them; etc. We can discuss possible questions in class, so bring in ideas.
You should review the material you have on your person ahead of time and use it in plotting out questions.
Interviewers sometimes ask a subject to provide photographs and memorabilia to discuss during the interview, and
these can both serve as primary sources in your analysis and serve to stimulate the subject’s memory.
Look over course readings and consider the historical context for this woman's life. Consult the brief bio and
note what factors in this subject’s life are likely to be central to your interview. Do you want to know about her
experiences during a specific period, like the Great Depression, World War II, the postwar era, and/or the 1970s?
Do you want to know what her life was like living in a rural area or in a city? Will you be discussing her
experiences as a student, a worker, the mother of a large family, a political activist, a military wife, a community
volunteer? If she was politically aware or active at a certain time, such as during the civil rights or modern
women’s liberation movement, what ideas might you want to ask her about?
Step 3: The Interview: Interviews may be conducted and recorded in person or via phone, Skype, video chat,
Facetime, Google Hangout, etc., or a combination. Make sure to arrange for a specific time (or times, as having
multiple shorter interviews can be a good strategy). Notify your subject that she will need to sign a consent form
that I supply (available on Sakai) and, if you or she wish, you may supply some of your questions ahead of time.
Confirm this appointment and keep it!
You will need to record your interview. It should be a minimum of one hour long and on some type of media
that you can play back and transcribe as needed (preferably digital audio or some format of film).
You should conduct your interview in a quiet place where the subject feels comfortable. If there are
additional people present at any point during the interview, make a note of who they are and what their relationship
is to the interviewee (if this is a possibility, think ahead of time about how you will handle it and whether it is
likely to be helpful or not). Bring along your questions as well as a notepad so you can jot down thoughts and
comments, add additional things to follow up on, or cross out questions already answered.
Follow up by sending your subject a thank-you note for their time and effort. Some interviewees may be
willing to talk to you again to clarify questions or follow up on specific issues; try to make sure that it is clear to
both of you whether this will happen or not.

4: In-Class Workshop of your Oral History Information: after you have had some time to think about the
information you have, read up on relevant history, and develop some analysis, we will spend a class sharing your
ideas as they develop.
5: The Final Written Essay: Your final essay should be approximately 8 pages long and place your interview
subject's life in the broader context of American women's history. Is your subject indicative of general patterns or
trends which we have studied in this class or does her life present counter examples? Are there specific factors
(family, education, immigration, race, political involvement, class) which shaped her life in important ways? Your
essay should incorporate quotes from your interview as well as at least two additional primary sources and at least
three secondary sources. Your project will be graded on your knowledge of the interview subject, use of the
interview, clarity of writing, and – especially – your ability to make an argument about the context of the subject's
life story. We will conclude the semester b spending a day discussing the projects, what you learned, and how
looking at oral histories might influence our understanding of U.S> women’s