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The Oral History Association (OHA) announces a search for the next editorial team for its journal, Oral History Review, published for the Association by Routledge/Taylor and Francis. The new editorial team will take office January 1, 2024, for a 2024 – 2026 term.

The current editors, David Caruso, Abby Perkiss and Janneken Smucker, are successfully completing their service for the period 2021-2023 (contracts end December 31, 2023). With the OHR in healthy shape thanks to the editors’ leadership, OHA now seeks an editorial team to build from this base, while also creating new directions for the journal. OHR is committed to working with our publisher and readership to continue expanding – and imagining – an OHR for the 21st century.

With the start of 2024, the new team will begin to focus on organizing their workflows and processes and begin work on the special issue, commemorating the Journal’s 50th anniversary, with advice from the previous editorial team.

This call is open to oral history practitioners – including oral historians, librarians, archivists, freelance/independent historians, instructors, trainers – located worldwide. You may apply for yourself or as part of a team. OHR also seeks to expand the diversity of its editorial team.

Deadline for submissions: Thursday, March 1, 2023, 11:59 am PST.

Application process: completing an online application form (https://tinyurl.com/ohr-editorial-search-2022) and submitting a CV or résumé (2 pages maximum) detailing your related service and editorial
experience. Questions? Contact please contact gro.y1675624183rotsi1675624183hlaro1675624183@aho1675624183 with “OHR Editorial Team Search” in the subject line.

Oral History Association
Oral History Review 2024 – 2026 Editorial Team Search

OHA COMMITMENTS

OHA is committed to selecting an editorial team that will bring dynamic ideas to continue the expansion of the journal’s readership and accessibility; the clarification and enhancement of the editorial board’s role in collaborative decision-making processes; and the priorities of clear communication and transparency in the peer-review process. OHA is also committed to securing an editorial team that reflects a genuine plurality of oral history training and experiences, dis/abilities, cultures,
worldviews, gender, or race, and geographical region.

EDITORIAL DUTIES AND OBLIGATIONS

Prospective editors are invited to share their own editorial strategy and structure in their proposal. Under earlier editors, work was divided among five editorial positions: editor; managing editor; digital editor; copy editor; and book review editor. The current editorial staff eschews a hierarchy of positions and in general handles the following job duties through a collective approach. In coordination with the journal’s editorial team, Routledge/Taylor and Francis handles editorial production, manufacturing, distribution, and financial management of the journal.

October 10, 2022

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

The Oral History Association [OHA] is pleased to announce that Baylor University’s Institute for Oral History will be the association’s new home, effective Jan. 1, 2023. Stephen Sloan, the Director of the Institute, and associate Professor of History, will serve as the new OHA Executive Director. Steven Sielaff, the Institute’s editor and collection’s manager will serve as the OHA Assistant Director.

Baylor’s Institute for Oral History is a leader in the field and has been recording and archiving oral histories for more than 50 years. It is known for fostering oral history practice through its many workshops and for creating a widely used oral history style guide, among other accomplishments, such as hosting the Texas Oral History Association. “After five successful years at Middle Tennessee State University, we’re looking forward to our new partnership with Baylor, which has one of the premier oral history programs in the country,” said OHA President Amy Starecheski.

Under the new partnership, the Institute for Oral History will provide office space, release time for executive director Sloan and assistant director Sielaff, as well as additional program support. The Oral History Association will hire a full-time program associate to support the organization’s work. “The Oral History Association has long been the nexus of my professional life, the place where both my passions and practice have been honed and energized. I am grateful for the community and guidance that OHA and its membership has provided me in so many profound ways, and I relish the opportunity to facilitate that for other oral historians,” said Sloan. Sielaff added, “I am honored to be appointed assistant director, and I am excited to be able to provide this additional level of service to OHA and all oral historians as we venture further into the technological marvel that is the twenty-first century.”

Since 2018, the OHA has been headquartered at the Albert Gore Research Center at Middle Tennessee State University, where Professors Kristine McCusker and Louis M. Kyriakoudes have served as co-executive directors. “We have navigated the OHA successfully through the COVID-19 pandemic, won important grant initiatives from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and are handing over to Baylor a healthy organization. It has been an honor to serve the Oral History Association and the field of oral history,” said Kyriakoudes.

Outgoing OHA co-executive director Kris McCusker and program associate Faith Bagley will oversee the transition of OHA operations to its new home at Baylor. “These five years have gone by so quickly, and I’m looking forward to Prof. Sloan and his outstanding team continuing to foster OHA’s growth and service to oral historians,” said McCusker.

For more information contact:

Louis M. Kyriakoudes,
Co-Executive Director, Oral History Association,
ude.u1675624183stm@s1675624183eduok1675624183airyK1675624183.siuo1675624183L1675624183 / 615-898-2633

June 1, 2022

The Oral History Association announces the recipients of eleven mini grants, funded by an $825,000 grant from the NEH American Rescue Plan.

In October 2021 the Oral History Association was awarded $825,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan: Humanities Grantmaking [Funding Opportunity Number: 20210513-ARPG]. Oral historians from communities which have been historically marginalized in the field (such as Indigenous peoples, people of color, people with disabilities, and working class people) were particularly invited to apply. Applicants were encouraged to propose projects grounded in partnerships with communities and organizations.

We allocated $60,000 of this money for mini-grants to support research that will lead to greater equity and inclusion in the field of oral history.

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Charles Chavis and Jack Del Nunzio; Anna Kaplan; Alexandra Lacey, María Velázquez, Brett Halperin, Luis Trujillo; Timi Reedy and Jocelyn Lee; Sarah Dziedzic; Ashby Haywood and Dartricia Rollins; Kaila Austin; Troy Gaston, Colette Payne, and Maria Moon; Hongyan Yang; Adam Fracchia; and Andre L. Taylor.

Recipients will be

• developing reparative and anti-racist oral history practices through work on lynching in Maryland,
• telling the story of Black women’s labors in early institutional oral history projects/programs,
• documenting the voices and experiences of oral historians in Kentucky and Central Appalachia,
• refining methodologies to balance narrator privacy and the desire to amplify experiences in activist oral history work
• researching barriers to doing oral history faced by people directly impacted by incarceration 
• producing and activating knowledge about the experiences of oral history practitioners as workers
• exploring recipes and food stories as repositories of African American family history
• learning with ​​reproductive justice advocates about how to use oral histories for organizing
• understanding and supporting the role of “natural historians” in Black communities
• using family archives and architectural history to create place-based oral histories
• training young people to work at the intersection of oral history and archaeology to unearth urban histories

Oral historians from communities which have been historically marginalized in the field (such as Indigenous peoples, people of color, people with disabilities, and working class people) were particularly invited to apply. Applicants were encouraged to propose projects grounded in partnerships with communities and organizations, and project partners include:

• The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project
• The University of Kentucky Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History
• Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission
• Organization of Chinese Americans-Wisconsin
• The National Public Housing Museum
• The Association for the Study of African American Life and History
• Spelman College Archives
• Southern Foodways Alliance

Full bios and project descriptions are available at https://www.oralhistory.org/oha-neh-mini-grant-recipients/.

Taken together, these projects will make significant contributions and lead to greater equity and inclusion in the field of oral history through broadening our methodologies, rewriting our histories, and critically examining barriers to participation in oral history work.

We especially thank the selection committee – Paul Ortiz, Sara Sinclair, Dao Tran, Brian Greenwald, Robert Luckett, Marie Cochran, Daisy Herrera – for their hard work evaluating the many compelling applications received.

Louis Kyriakoudes, Director of The Albert Gore Research Center & Professor of History at Middle Tennessee State University and Co-Executive Director of OHA, and Amy Starecheski, Director of the Columbia University Oral History Master of Arts Program and 2021-22 President of the OHA, serve as Co-Principal Investigators on the grant. Kelly Elaine Navies, Oral Historian at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and First Vice-President of OHA, chaired the selection committee and will be advising grantees.

As a part of this funding series, OHA also awarded eleven year long fellowships: https://www.oralhistory.org/2022/04/04/oha-neh-fellowship-winners/.

The Oral History Association is thrilled to have this opportunity to provide support for oral historians while also implementing our 2020 strategic plan, which centers on making our field inclusive and equitable through building an organization which

• is a transparent, inclusive, responsive, and valued resource with a growing body of diverse leaders and practitioners.
• is a nationally and internationally recognized advocate for oral history and a champion for the development and well-being of oral history practitioners and programs.
• develops relevant, accessible, and innovative programming that enhances practitioners’ ability to do meaningful oral history work.

Contacts:

Louis Kyriakoudes, ude.u1675624183stm@s1675624183eduok1675624183airyK1675624183.siuo1675624183L1675624183 615-898-2633
Kelly Navies, ude.i1675624183s@Kse1675624183ivaN1675624183
Amy Starecheski, ude.a1675624183ibmul1675624183oc@931675624183saa1675624183 212-851-4395

April 5, 2022

The Oral History Association announces the recipients of eleven year-long fellowships, funded by an $825,000 grant from the NEH American Rescue Plan.

In October 2021 the Oral History Association was awarded $825,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan: Humanities Grantmaking [Funding Opportunity Number: 20210513-ARPG]  for a project titled “Diversifying Oral History Practice: A Fellowship Program for Under/Unemployed Oral Historians.” Oral historians from communities which have been historically marginalized in the field (such as Indigenous peoples, people of color, people with disabilities, and working class people) were particularly invited to apply. Applicants were encouraged to propose projects grounded in partnerships with communities and organizations.

OHA has awarded eleven year-long fellowships of $60,000. In addition to the fellowship award, fellows will be provided with mentoring, research funds, training, and a supportive cohort experience. 

Please join us in congratulating Elizabeth A. Castle, Angela Darlean LeBlanc-Ernest, Colette Denali Montoya-Sloan, Virginia Espino, Fernanda Espinosa, Fanny Julissa Garcia, Lynn Lewis, Marta V. Martínez, Danita Mason-Hogans, Veronica Pasfield, and Tea Rozman.

Fellows will be working with 

recently-arrived Afghan refugees resettled in Minnesota,
homeless activists in NYC,
Indigenous Wabanaki peoples in Maine,
families separated by U.S. immigration policies,
Indian Boarding School survivors,
and working class Latinx, Afro-Latinx and Indigenous people in Los Angeles, 

And projects will include the creation of 

an emerging Latino/Latinx Oral Historians Fellowship Program in Rhode Island,
a critical oral history of Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina,
a collaborative oral history of stopping Uranium mining in the Black Hills,
a multimedia history of the Black Panther Party’s Oakland Community School,
and a new blueprint for institutional approaches to collecting inclusively and intersectionally.

Taken together, these fellows and these projects will make significant contributions to decolonizing the field of oral history through developing inclusive networks, methodologies, and stories.

Full bios and project descriptions are available at https://www.oralhistory.org/2022/04/04/oha-neh-fellowship-winners/.

We especially thank the selection committee – Paul Ortiz, Sara Sinclair, Dao Tran, Brian Greenwald, Robert Luckett, Marie Cochran, Daisy Herrera – for their hard work evaluating the many compelling applications received.

Louis Kyriakoudes, Director of The Albert Gore Research Center & Professor of History at Middle Tennessee State University and Co-Executive Director of OHA, and Amy Starecheski, Director of the Columbia University Oral History Master of Arts Program and 2021-22 President of the OHA, serve as Co-Principal Investigators on the grant. Kelly Elaine Navies, Oral Historian at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and First Vice-President of OHA, chairs the selection committee.

As a part of this funding series, OHA will also be awarding up to a dozen smaller grants (recipients to be announced in April) to support research into the history and current dynamics of the field of oral history, with the aim of creating knowledge that can be deployed to create a more equitable and inclusive field.

The Oral History Association is thrilled to have this opportunity to provide support for oral historians while also implementing our 2020 strategic plan, which centers on making our field inclusive and equitable through building an organization which 

• is a transparent, inclusive, responsive, and valued resource with a growing body of diverse leaders and practitioners.
• is a nationally and internationally recognized advocate for oral history and a champion for the development and well-being of oral history practitioners and programs. 
• develops relevant, accessible, and innovative programming that enhances practitioners’ ability to do meaningful oral history work.

Contacts:
Louis Kyriakoudes, ude.u1675624183stm@s1675624183eduok1675624183airyK1675624183.siuo1675624183L1675624183 615-898-2633
Kelly Navies, ude.i1675624183s@Kse1675624183ivaN1675624183
Amy Starecheski, ude.a1675624183ibmul1675624183oc@931675624183saa1675624183 212-851-4395