When things are going well, you’re debating what professionals debate. As we work our way into our oral history unit, I felt as though the students were torn: do you find a person to interview and make the center of your oral history or do you find a theme that you’re interested in and then start conducting your interview. <\/p>\n
This is an old dilemma for historians. You may want to study something but do not have the sources to pull it off. You can be as creative as you like with the sources you do have, whether they’re documents, statistics, shards of pottery, newspapers, but you can’t write history without sources. <\/p>\n
In our conversation today, that’s exactly the issue the students circled, explored, and churned through. Some students seem committed enough to their theme that they’ll keep asking folks until they find a great source. Others want to talk with Grandma so much that they’ll move their theme. Others became aware that no matter how much they want to study something using oral history, in some situations it will may be possible. A couple of examples: interviewing people they have not met will require extensive leg work and interviewing dead people isn’t possible. Yet. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When things are going well, you’re debating what professionals debate. As we work our way into our oral history unit, I felt as though the students were torn: do you find a person to interview and make the center of your oral history or do you find a theme that you’re interested in and then … Continue reading When it’s going well…<\/span>