Topics In Anthropology (390-0-5)
Topic
Oral History
Instructors
Katherine Elizabeth Hoffman
847/491-4565
1810 Hinman Ave., Room #206, EV Campus
Katherine E. Hoffman is Director of the Middle East and North African Studies Program. She is a linguistic, sociocultural, and legal anthropologist, who specializes in the relationship between expressive culture, ethnicity, law, history, and political economy.
Meeting Info
ANTHRO Sem Rm B07 - 1810 Hinmn: Tues 2:00PM - 4:50PM
Overview of class
This course introduces students to understanding world events through individual experiences and will provide them with methodological training to conduct life history interviews, transcribe recordings, analyze the narratives in them, and craft readable life histories targeted to a generalist audience. The Oral History approach values the experiences and understandings of everyday people, placing them not only in their immediate lives but also in the fabric of broader social processes, moving beyond statistics, policy, and normative expectations of how individuals in certain gendered, racial, class, or political categories experience the world. Students learn about the uses, circulations, and repositories of oral histories, and how the oral history tool can enrich their own research and post-university work skills. Drawing on linguistic anthropological insights into narrative as co-constructed in everyday life, students will learn to identify narratives and stories in everyday interactions. Students will conduct an oral history project that links to an event familiar to the wider public: the Covid-19 pandemic, experiences of confinement, or distance learning; the rise of authoritarian and polarizing politics; the expansion or elimination of women's reproductive rights; climate change / extreme weather events (fires, floods, heat, drought); or another topic of choice that merges the intimate and the global. No previous research experience is necessary. Class meetings will include mini-lectures, group discussion, small group workshopping, and collaborative refining of interviewing skills. Required reading materials will be provided.
Class Materials (Required)
All provided on Canvas