Recipients
Timeline
Training Workshops
Recipients:
In September, 2021 the Oral History Association was awarded $825,000 from the NEH American Rescue Plan to create a fellowship and grants program for under/unemployed oral historians, with a focus on oral historians from communities that have historically been marginalized in the field.
The OHA chose the following as recipients of the Fellowship and Mini Grant Program:
- View the Fellowship Recipients
- View the Mini Grant Recipients
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Grant Timeline:
- First two weeks of Nov: Selection Committee provides feedback on application
- Nov 15: Application opens
- Nov 30: Social Justice Oral History workshop for applicants and public
- Dec 8: Information session for applicants
- Jan 15: Application Deadline
- Jan 15–Feb 15: Application review and decision-making
- Mid- March: Recipients Announced
- April 1, 2022-May 30, 2022: Year-long Fellowships begin
- April 2022–May 2023: Fellowship cohort meetings, training workshops, etc. Research grant projects happen.
- May 31, 2023: Year-long fellowships end
- September 2023: Grant ends
- October 2023: Fellows work shared at OHA Annual Meeting
Training Workshops:
#1: Social Justice Oral History Workshop
Tuesday, November 30, 2021, 12:30-3:30 PST/1:30- 4:30pm MST/ 2:30-5:30pm CST/ 3:30-6:30pm EST
ASL interpretation and closed captioning are available.
Recording is now available:
Speaker View with Screen Share
How can oral history follow a social justice praxis? Oral historians Nishani Frazier and Cliff Mayotte will discuss how practitioners can create and follow a process which centers narrators and narrator communities. The workshop will entail analytical discussion about SJ praxis, sample models and questions to consider, and provide supplemental materials to aid workshop attendees toward better formulating social justice centered oral history projects.
Nishani Frazier is Associate Professor of American Studies and History at University of Kansas. Prior to University of Kansas, she held positions as Associate Curator of African American History and Archives at Western Reserve Historical Society (WRHS), Assistant to the Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Archives at the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, and personal assistant for Dr. John Hope Franklin, before and during his tenure as chair of President Bill Clinton’s advisory board on “One America”. Her research interests include 1960s freedom movements, oral history, food, digital humanities, and black economic development. Nishani’s recent book publication, Harambee City: The Congress of Racial Equality in Cleveland and the Rise of Black Power Populism, was released with an accompanying website also titled Harambee City. Dr. Frazier is currently working on two manuscripts- a digital project and text on gentrification titled Voices of the Displaced as well as a tasty new book project called Cooking With Black Nationalism. You can follow her on her website or via Twitter at @SpelmanDiva.
For over a decade, Cliff Mayotte has served as the Education Program Director for Voice of Witness, an award-winning non profit that amplifies the voices of people impacted by—and fighting against—injustice. He has facilitated oral history trainings and workshops around the US. Cliff is a former member of the OHA Education Committee and recently co-chaired an OHA task force on oral history and social justice. He compiled and edited The Power of the Story: The Voice of Witness Teacher’s Guide to Oral History and co-wrote and edited Say It Forward: A Guide to Social Justice Storytelling, published by Haymarket Books. He is a recipient of the Beverly Kees Educator Award from The Society of Professional Journalists, and is a former education director for the Tony award-winning
#2: Information Session on OHA’s Fellowship and Research Grants Program for Under/Unemployed Oral Historians.
Wednesday, December 8, 2021, 9:00am-10:00am PST/10:00am-11:00am MST/ 11:00am-12:00pm CST / 12:00pm-1:oopm EST
ASL interpretation and closed captioning are available.
The recording is available:
Speaker View with Screen Share
This session will provide an opportunity for potential applicants for fellowships and research grants to ask questions of Amy Starecheski, OHA President, Kelly Navies, OHA First Vice President and chair of the selection committee, Louis Kyriakoudes, OHA Co-Executive Director, and members of the selection committee.
#3: Additional Information Session on OHA’s Fellowship and Research Grants Program for Under/Unemployed Oral Historians.
Wednesday, January 5, 2022, 9:00am-10:00am PST/10:00am-11:00am MST/ 11:00am-12:00pm CST / 12:00pm-1:oopm EST
ASL interpretation and closed captioning will be available.
This session will provide an overview of the application process, as well as an additional opportunity for potential applicants to ask questions of Amy Starecheski, OHA President, Kelly Navies, OHA First Vice President and chair of the selection committee, and Louis Kyriakoudes, OHA Co-Executive Director.
#4: Oral History Workshop, “Call & Response: An Oral Historian’s Remixed Approach to Composing a Hybrid Career,” Mi’Jan Celie Tho-Biaz, Ed.D
Wednesday, July 6, 2022, 10:00am-11:30am PT / 11:00m-12:30pm MT / 12:00pm-1:30pm CT / 1:00pm-2:30pm ET
Recording is available:
Shared screen with speaker view
What can oral history collection methodologies teach us about possibility-making, while we design and build our careers that center play, rest and focused work?
How do we intentionally shift to projects that bring us more joy, instead of accepting portfolios of work that may be draining?
What can we turn to, again and again, as spaces of professional relationship-building and work production labs?
This workshop is scored in three parts, that will include: a short overview of one oral historian’s approach to building her unique practice, an interactive discussion about the distinct building blocks that launched her career and those that continue to cultivate it, followed by dedicated Q&A time.
Attendees will come to the workshop with their own existing professional practices in mind, and leave with a clear set of next steps to consider and take as they recalibrate their hybrid careers.
Dr. Mi’Jan Celie Tho-Biaz, Ed.D. is a Kennedy Center Citizen Artist, documentarian & cultural producer. In collaboration with world builders, Mi’Jan creates participatory story projects and story-rich events that connect people who are committed to achieving meaningful transformation and social change. Through all of Mi’Jan’s work, she seeks to honor our past, make meaning of our present, and vision liberated futures.
#5 Building and Managing an Oral History Business
Friday October 7, 2022, 11:00am-1:00pm PT/12:00-2:00pm MT/1:00-3:00pm CT/2:00-4:00pm ET
Recording Available:
Shared Screen with Speaker View
Online workshop on the topic of building and managing an oral
history business, including deciding to freelance or set up a non-profit or for-profit company
Leaders: Sarah Dziedzic and Jess Lamar Reese Holler
#6: Oral History Workshop, “Introduction to Mukurtu for Oral Historians,” Michael Wynne
Monday, February 13, 2023, 12:30pm-2:00pm PT / 1:30pm-3:00pm MT / 2:30pm-4:00pm CT / 3:30pm-5:00pm ET
Recording in gallery view (with ASL interpretation)
Mukurtu (MOOK-oo-too) is a grassroots project aiming to empower communities to manage, share, narrate, and exchange their digital heritage in culturally relevant and ethically-minded ways. Mukurtu is an open source Content Management System platform flexible enough to meet the needs of diverse communities who want to manage and share their digital cultural heritage in their own way, on their own terms. It serves some of the same needs as Omeka or WordPress, but with an extra set of tools that allow you to determine fine-grained levels of access to your digital heritage materials based on your community needs and values.
In this workshop, Michael Wynne will provide an overview of Mukurtu. Topics covered include the history and development of Mukurtu, its core features and tools (eg: communities, cultural protocol, categories, digital heritage items, and dictionary words), examples of Mukurtu in use, and live demonstrations, all with a focus on its use within oral history work.
Michael Wynne is the Digital Applications Librarian in the Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation (CDSC) at Washington State University. He is the primary support specialist for Mukurtu CMS, and is a member of the Mukurtu development team. His core work revolves around ethical digital cultural heritage management, and through other programs and partnerships at the CDSC he provides support and training for digitization, digital preservation, and related topics.
#7: “Activating Oral Histories” with Mark Menjívar
Tuesday, April 4, 2023, 1-3pm CST / 2-4pm EST
Recording is now available here.
Where have you had meaningful interactions with oral histories? How can oral histories be used in museums and art galleries? What role can publications play in disseminating oral histories? How can we consider our audience when presenting oral history in public spaces? Where can we integrate participation and collaboration within our oral history projects?
In this workshop, artist Mark Menjívar will get us thinking about various participatory modes and methods of activating oral histories in the world. Come ready to share your own experiences with oral histories in the public as we build a toolkit to carry us into future work.
Mark Menjívar is a San Antonio based artist and Associate Professor in the School of Art and Design at Texas State University. His art practice primarily consists of creating participatory projects while being rooted in photography, oral history, archives, and social action. He attended McLennan Community College, holds a BA in Social Work from Baylor University and an MFA in Social Practice from Portland State University.
Mark is the artist-in-residence with the Texas After Violence Project, a public memory archive that fosters deeper understandings of the impacts of state violence. He is also a member of Borderland Collective, which utilizes collaborations between artists, educators, youth, and community members to engage complex issues and build space for diverse perspectives, meaningful dialogue, and modes of creation around border issues.
#8: The Stories All Around Us: Oral Histories as Collaborative Art- and History-Making with Our Loved Ones
Wednesday, May 10, 2023, 2-4pm CST / 3-5pm ET
Recording is now available here.
Where were you the last time someone told you a story about themselves? Who were you with? What sparked this memory? What memories did they spark for you?
In this workshop, Rochelle Hoi-Yiu Kwan will give us a peek into her deeply personal process of listening, sharing, and creating with her family and neighbors as a cultural organizer, oral history educator, and DJ. Bringing together art, music, and oral history, we’ll hear stories from loved ones and collaborative reimaginings of these personal histories.
We’ll explore the ways that stories happen all around us and how we can start to plant the seeds for people to actively participate as artists and storytellers together with their loved ones. We’ll walk away imagining:
- How can we look for the stories and histories that live in our homes, our day-to-day lives, and our loved ones?
- How can we cultivate our communities as our classrooms and living rooms for opening up conversation, sparking memories, and building connections across generations?
- How can we activate these personal stories and relationships to inform our understanding of our histories, from within and beyond the archives?
And just like we learn to tune the dial just right on the radio, we’ll walk away with the skills to tune in to and celebrate the stories all around us, with the people we love.
Rochelle Hoi-Yiu Kwan is a cultural organizer, oral history educator, and DJ whose work aims to equip communities with the tools to get to know their loved ones and build multigenerational art and oral history projects together.
As an oral history educator, Rochelle builds her practice around the belief that we are all storytellers. As the Community Producer at Self Evident, she leads their growing oral history training and archiving program. She is the Storytelling Team Lead and resident DJ at Think!Chinatown, an intergenerational non-profit based in New York City’s Manhattan Chinatown, working at the intersection of storytelling, arts, and neighborhood engagement. She has also worked with partners such as the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, Hunter College Asian American Studies Program, StoryCorps, Red Canary Song, Bulosan Center for Filipino Studies, as well as her own family and neighbors.
In tandem with her oral history work, she takes on her childhood name YiuYiu 瑶瑶 as an artist and DJ for Chinatown Records, a multigenerational community effort through inherited family record collections, music, and memory. Alongside her family and neighbors, YiuYiu 瑶瑶 produces Chinatown block parties, sonic family histories, and listening sessions to foster intergenerational dancefloors and collaborative art-making as powerful acts of resistance and resilience. (Photo credit Cindy Trinh).
#9: Meet the Program Officers Event
Watch the recording on YouTube!
Sept. 28, 12:30-2 CT / 1:30-3PM ET / 10:30-12 PT
ASL interpretation and closed captioning will be available.
The Oral History Association invites you to meet program officers from funders that support oral history. In this event, program officers from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, and the Institute for Museum and Library Services will share funding opportunities and advice for creating a successful funding application. The event will close with audience questions and informal smaller group discussions in breakout rooms with the program officers. This is the final event in our public workshop series as part of our grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Panelists: Erin Barsan, Senior Library Program Officer, Institute for Museum and Library Services Patricia Hswe, Public Knowledge Program Director, Mellon Foundation Martin Tsang, Senior Program Officer, Division of Preservation and Access, National Endowment for the Humanities Amy Starecheski, Past President of the Oral History Association and Director of the Oral History MA Program at Columbia University, will moderate the event
