Each summer in New York City, CCOH sponsors an annual Summer Institute, which brings together oral historians, scholars, activists, and others for two weeks of advanced training in the theory and practice of oral history. Participants work with world-class instructors, network with oral historians from around the world and go to exhibits in New York City. Each year we focus on a different theme.

The Columbia Center for Oral History is proud to announce its 2013 Summer Institute, “Telling the World: Indigenous Memories, Rights, and Narratives" to be held June 10-21, 2013 at Columbia University in New York City. Sessions will explore the themes of indigenous memories, narratives and rights through local and global perspectives. Faculty will include experts on American Indian life, as well as indigenous cultures from Canada, New Zealand and other areas of the world. The institute will focus on traditions of telling and ways of knowing in primarily oral cultures. CCOH's core faculty and students from the Oral History Master of Arts Program (OHMA) will engage in dialogue with guest faculty on the themes of indigenous rights, oral traditions and human rights. We encourage students, scholars, and activists from local and global communities to apply.

The application is available for download here [doc].

APPLICATION DUE: April 15, 2013

Return form and current CV or resume to ccohsummerinstitute@libraries.cul.columbia.edu

Core faculty will include:

• Mary Marshall Clark, Director of the Columbia Center for Oral History and co-director of the Oral History Master of Arts Program at the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics of Columbia University;
• China Ching, Assoiciate Program Officer at The Christensen Fund;
• Doug Boyd, Director of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries;
• Peter Bearman, Director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics and co-director of the Oral History Master of Arts Program;
• Alessandro Portelli, Professor of Anglo-American Literature at the University of Rome-La Sapienza;
• Ronald J. Grele, Director Emeritus of the Columbia Center for Oral History.
• Linda Shopes, Former President of the U.S. Oral History Association, Freelance Editor and Consultant in Oral and Public History.

Our 2011 Summer Institute, “Rethinking 9/11: Life Stories, Cultural Memory and the Politics of Representation,” was attended by 18 fellows from the United States, Canada, Ireland and South Africa.The Institute was held from June 13-14, 2011. Drawing on the Oral History Research Office’s extensive September 11, 2001 Narrative and Memory Project, faculty and fellows explored the political, cultural, psychological, ethical and personal dimensions of documenting urban injury and recovery.

Peter Bearman, Mary Marshall Clark, Gerald Albarelli and Amy Starecheski spoke about the creation and interpretation of narratives of September 11 taken in the weeks and years after the events. The focus of the institute was broadened by presentations by Alessandro Portelli on his work on Harlan County, as well as life stories of victims of terrorism in Italy, and Ghislaine Boulanger on her work after Katrina. Irum Shiek’s presentation on her book, Detained without Cause: Muslim Stories of Detention and Deportation in America after 9/11 and the fieldwork that led to it was a deep intellectual contribution to the process of “re-thinking” 9/11.

Download the complete 2011 Summer Institute program.

2010: Oral History from the Ground Up: Space, Place, Memory. This year’s institute examined the meaning that space, place and memory hold in producing individual, social, cultural and political narratives.

2009, Narrating the Body: Oral History, Narrative and Embodied Practice
This year’s program explored issues, stories and performances tracing the history of the body, as well as oral history as an embodied practice

2008, Oral History, Advocacy and the Law
This year’s program explored the parallel uses of oral history and legal testimony in the classical definition of advocacy as “finding and giving” voice, and looked at human rights commissions, tribunals and oral history documentation.

2007, Telling the World: Oral History, Struggles for Justice and Human Rights Dialogues
This year’s program explored how oral history theory and method contribute to an understanding of the political, historical and personal dimensions of human rights dialogues. Joining us in the creation of this year’s program was the International Center for Transitional Justice.

2006: Women's Narratives, Women's Lives: Intersections of Gender and Memory
This year’s program featured presentations on such topics of gender and memory in illness and activist narratives.

2005: Living to Tell: Narrating Catastrophe through Oral History
This year’s program focused on the challenges of using oral history to document catastrophe in its immediate aftermath and beyond.

2004: Constructions of Race and Ethnicity from Past to Present: Negotiating Collective Memories through Oral History
This year’s program focused on the role of oral history in creating and critiquing representations of race and ethnicity in collective memory, popular culture and individual life narratives.

2003, Telling Lives: Memory, Orality and Testimony in Oral History
This year’s program explored the use of testimonies in discourses on marginalized communities, and how such testimonies subvert and correct public myth and memory.

2002, Oral History in Contemporary Contexts: Documenting Narratives of War, Conflict and Displacement in the Era of Globalization
This year’s program focused on the challenges of using oral history to document war, conflict and displacement in situations of both immediate and remembered trauma.

2001, Documenting Memories of Struggle and Resistance: Social Change and Social Memories
This year's program focused on the complexities of documenting memories of social and political change through individuals’ remembrances.