OHA News

By Annie Valk, OHA President The tragic loss of our executive director and good friend Cliff Kuhn in 2015 was a blow to the OHA family.  As the organization’s first executive director, Cliff worked tirelessly with leadership and members to ensure the success of OHA into the future. As we move forward with important initiatives, […]

The Oral History Association has formed a committee to begin the search for an institutional home for its executive office beginning in early 2018.  As part of this process, the committee has also been charged with finding a new executive director to serve as its principal administrator. Georgia State University will house OHA and Kristine

By Tony Macaluso, Director of Syndication WFMT Radio Network & The Studs Terkel Radio Archive Studs Terkel is best known in the world of oral history for his many curiosity-driven books (Working, Hard Times, The Good War, Race) that helped popularize oral history among the general public starting in the 1970s. Those wildly influential books

OHA members will elect a new first vice president and a new OHA Council member as well as three members of the OHA Nominating Committee in online voting this summer. Members will receive an email link in July with instructions for online voting until early September. Paper ballots will not be mailed to members. Choices

By Mary Larson, Chair 50th Anniversary Task Force  OHA will be celebrating its semi-centennial at our Long Beach meeting this fall, and the 50th Anniversary Task Force is working hard to ensure that there will be a wide range of activities and conference sessions presented as part of the festivities. Programming isn’t the task force’s

What began in 1969 with an interview with a colleague of legendary American composer Charles Ives has morphed into Yale University’s Oral History of American Music archive, with more than 2,600 interviews with leading lights of 20th and 21st century American music. The story of the archive and its evolution was featured recently in Yale

Big news for OHA in 1975 was raising membership dues to $10, up from $7.50 the previous year, equivalent to a whopping $36.23 in today’s dollars. A 1974 issue of the OHA Newsletter also recounted a memorable snafu at that year’s annual meeting: Oral historians who attended the ninth annual OHA Colloquium at Grant Teton

Follow our weekly series, Throwback Thursday, designed to help celebrate 50 years of OHA. We’ll profile a year in the life of the organization each week with photos, logos, and highlights taken from the Oral History Association Newsletter. We welcome your memories, photos, and comments at oha@gsu.edu. OHA in 1978… Ron Marcello, University of North Texas, OHA Executive Secretary

  Oral History Society Annual Conference, 8-9 July, 2016 Registration is now open for the OHS Annual Conference entitled ‘Beyond Text in the Digital Age?  Oral History, Images and the Written Word’.  The conference will be held at the University of Roehampton.  Keynote spears are Professors Mary Larson, Alessandro Portelli and Anne Valk. Registration information

Follow our weekly series, Throwback Thursday, designed to help celebrate 50 years of OHA. We’ll profile a year in the life of the organization each week with photos, logos, and highlights taken from the Oral History Association Newsletter. We welcome your memories, photos, and comments at oha@gsu.edu. OHA in 1977… President: William Wyatt, Western Health Systems, Inc.Site of

The Oral History Association’s Labor Working Group came into existence earlier this year at the request of OHA President Annie Valk to address the labor dispute at the Renaissance Long Beach, the OHA conference hotel for our 2016 annual meeting. The Association risks severe financial penalty should it break the hotel contract or fail to