Field Notes
December 2015
From the Associate Director
Happy Holidays from the Southern Oral History Program!
 
I hope that your holiday season is filled with peace, good health, and good stories.
 
As our gift to you, I want to share the new SOHP podcast, Press Record. We've been working on this idea for a long time, and we are proud and excited to launch our new venture today. 
 
Press Record is a podcast about the joys and challenges of oral history. We will share gems from our archives, talk to experts in the field, share our own thoughts on the art and method of interviewing, give tips to those new to the field, and reflect on learning about the past from those who lived it. We hope you will enjoy it, and share it with anyone you know who might also be interested! 
 
Our first episode is called "Silence Speaks Volumes," and it ruminates on silence and power in oral history. I cohost this episode with field scholar and podcast editor extraordinaire, Evan Faulkenbury. You can listen in as I talk with Jacquelyn Dowd Hall about the first time she interviewed Katherine DuPre Lumpkin in 1974 and how she managed --and later interpreted--Katherine's silences. Evan gives some tips for handling silence in interviews, and we discuss three clips from interviewees in our archive who all talk about the relationship between silence and activism. We got great advice from Susan Davis of betterbroadcasts.com and want to thank her for all her support.
 
So as you are frying up those latkes or baking those cookies, listen in and let us know what you think! You can send us suggestions or comments at pressrecordsohp@gmail.com.
 
From our family to yours, happy holidays.
 
Rachel Seidman

Intern Performance: Black Pioneers

On Wednesday, December 9th, our undergraduate interns 
presented their research on the "Black Pioneers" and moved all of us in the audience at the Love House. The four interns  created and performed a compelling script based on interviews they did with members of the first cohorts of black students to attend UNC Chapel Hill between  1955 and 1972. From professors undermining their work, to being expected to sing Dixie at football games, to hearing fellow students cheer when Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, the stories the Pioneers told about their experiences at UNC were often difficult. The interns' thoughtfulness, skill, and collaboration combined to create a powerful commentary on the past and its resonance in the present. Congrats to Destinie Pittman, Devin Holman, Alex Ford, and Monique Laborde, and also their great teacher and mentor, our field scholar Taylor Livingston.
Good News

Our field scholars, present and past, deserve a big round of applause for all they've accomplished recently!

Kimber Thomas with Bill Ferris
Kimber Thomas was recently awarded the second annual Luther Brown Prize for her paper and presentation, "Black Characterization in the Southern Soul-Blues," at the  International Conference on the Blues hosted by Delta State University in October. The prize is awarded to an emerging scholar whose paper and presentation advances greater understanding and appreciation of the Mississippi Delta's cultural heritage.

Evan Faulkenbury published an article on the Oral History Review's blog, titled "Oral History and Childhood Memories." In it he discusses the importance of starting oral history interviews with questions about the interviewee's childhood, no matter how irrelevant it may seem to the topic at hand. Read more and listen to clips from interviews that Evan has conducted for SOHP  here .

Darius Scott
Former field scholar Darius Scott has continued to use materials from our Back Ways project across UNC, and has produced an impressive Digital Humanities project for a course on Multimedia Storytelling. View his website, The Arc of Rogers Road, here .

And finally, former field scholar Daniel B. Chavez has published an article in the most recent issue of  Kaleidoscope: A Graduate Journal of Qualitative Communication Research. The article is titled "Oral History and Performance as Research (PAR): "Undocumented" Narratives Documenting Lived Experience," and you can read it here.
Thank You!


We're so grateful to all who have given to SOHP over the past year; we couldn't do all that we do without your support. If you would like to make a gift to SOHP, you can visit our secure gift page and select our fund from the drop-down menu.  Or you can send your tax-deductible donation to:

The Arts & Sciences Foundation
134 E. Franklin Street, CB 6115
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-6115

For any questions, or to discuss supporting SOHP in more detail, please contact our Development Officer, Mark L. Newman , Associate Director of Development, at (919) 843-3919, or by  email .

Southern Oral History Program  |  Center for the Study of the American South 
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill  |  410 E. Franklin Street  |  Chapel Hill, NC 27514
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