Mary Marshall Clark, Director

mmc17@columbia.edu 212-854-2273

In addition to being the Director of CCOH, Mary Marshall Clark is co-founder and director of Columbia’s Oral History Master of Arts (OHMA) degree program, created in 2008-09. Formerly, she was an oral historian and filmmaker at the New York Times. Mary Marshall has been involved in oral history movement since 1991, and was president of the Oral History Association in 2001-2002.  

Mary Marshall was instrumental in the founding of the International Oral History Association. She was the co-principal investigator, with Peter Bearman, of the September 11, 2001 Oral History Narrative and Memory Project, and directed related projects on the aftermath of September 11th in New York City. She has directed projects on the Carnegie Corporation, the Atlantic Philanthropies, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Japanese Internment on the East Coast, the Apollo Theater and Women in the Visual Arts.  She has interviewed lead figures in the media, human rights, women’s movements and the arts.

Mary Marshall writes on issues of memory, the mass media, trauma, and ethics in oral history. Her current work focuses on the global impact of torture and detention policies at Guantánamo Bay.  Mary Marshall is an editor of After the Fall: New Yorkers Remember September 11, 2001 and the Years that Followed, published by The New Press in September, 2011. She is a distinguished lecturer for the Organization of American Historians.

Elizabeth Pope, Assistant Director

egp2007@columbia.edu 212-854-4012

Prior to joining the Center, Elizabeth served as an archivist for the National Archives and Records Administration. She has worked with the archives of the American Library Association, the Ad Council, and the University of Illinois. Her background also includes not-for-profit development and academic administration. Elizabeth holds a B.A. in American History from Columbia University and a M.S. in Library Science with a certificate in special collections from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Charis Emily Shafer, Office Assistant

ces2173@columbia.edu 212-854-7083

Charis came to Columbia from several years in Southeast Asia, where she taught Gender Studies to Cambodian undergraduates and was associate editor of the AsiaLife magazine writing about development and the arts. She also worked on documentaries about various topics including forced evictions, intravenous-drug users, and wrongful deportation. At the Center for Oral History, Charis has worked on the Elizabeth Murray Oral History of Women in the Visual Arts, working closely with the production company to arrange video shoots, advise on edits and produce a selects reel. She has also helped create the Women and Disability Oral History Project that was presented at The Scholar and Feminist Conference at Barnard.

Charis holds a B.A. in art history from New York University and received a M.A. in film and literature from the University of Essex. She is also currently pursuing a M.A. in the Oral History Master’s Program at Columbia. She is focusing her studies on visual oral history and film especially as it relates to women, human rights, and justice with a focus on Southeast Asia.

Terrell D. Frazier, Director of Education and Outreach

terrellfrazier@columbia.edu 212-854-1801

Terrell brings a range of research and communications experience to the Columbia Center for Oral History. Prior to joining the Center, Terrell worked with the national organizations Freedom to Marry, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. Throughout his career he has helped increase outreach capacity of nonprofits by building relationships with the media, producing research, and drafting editorial content, all while engaging communities in human rights causes. He earned a Masters of Arts degree in Sociology at The New School for Social Research, where he focused on using emergent media to spur social change, while also serving as a co-chair of the Critical Themes in Media Studies Conference. Terrell graduated from Michigan State University with a BA in Social Policy and Journalism.

Gabriel D. Solis, Project Coordinator; Guantánamo Bay Oral History Project

gds2120@columbia.edu 212-851-5807

Gabriel received a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin in 2008. Gabriel then served as Associate Director of the Texas After Violence Project, a human rights organization in Austin that conducts oral history interviews with people directly affected by state violence. In 2011, Gabriel graduated with a Master of Arts in Mexican American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Gabriel now conducts research and interviews for the Guantánamo Bay Oral History Project.

Sarah Dziedzic, Project Coordinator; Carnegie Corporation Oral History Project

sed65@columbia.edu 212-851-5820

Sarah is a graduate of the Oral History Master of Arts program at Columbia University and completed her thesis research on the role of memory in the landscape of Grant’s Tomb. She works as an oral historian for Wave Hill, a public garden in the Bronx, on a project that documents the role of the institution in open space preservation, horticulture and environmental education. She serves on the board of Seven Stories Institute, an organization that increases accessibility to books about alternatives to current governmental policies and attitudes, and which is currently operating a volunteer-run bookshop in Washington Heights called Word Up. She has also done environmental outreach and education in Pennsylvania and Oklahoma and, as a member of the Oral Historians for Social Justice network, advocates for new methodologies for studying landscape. She holds a B.A. from Columbia in English and Creative Writing.