PROPOSAL TYPE
Roundtable
SEEKING
- Seeking General Feedback and Interest
- Seeking Additional Presenters
- Seeking Specific Expertise
RELATED TOPICS
- Memory
- Museums
- Oral History
ABSTRACT
No matter how young or old the person is, recollecting their past experiences may elicit valuable insight into currently ongoing, urgent issues. For example, telling their memories through oral history interviews helps the public understand how these pressing issues can be connected to past events and take actions informed by the past. However, these memories need a concerted effort to be preserved and accessible. This roundtable proposal hopes to create dialogues about how public historians can collect, preserve, and disseminate these memories on various platforms. Also, it discusses how they have used oral histories or other first-person narratives as a tool that ethically responds to ongoing urgent issues.
DESCRIPTION
My primary goal is to solicit more roundtable panelists or to join another roundtable with a similar theme. I am open to participating in another presentation format if the respondents deem it more appropriate for my topic. If resources allow, I also welcome specific expertise and general feedback. To give more background information, I am an oral historian specializing in interviews with disabled people, immigrants, and scientists. This proposal is primarily related to my project on the history of disability, which collects the oral history of former patients of post-WWII state hospitals in North America, analyzing how these people lived with memories of forced institutionalization. While scholars have discussed how carceral institutions become de facto asylums now, this topic in history is particularly urgent because the revival of psychiatric institutions has earned much broader cultural and political support. The community of disabled people is increasingly concerned with this trend, and the memories of these former asylum patients can serve as testimony that speaks against this reverting trend of institutionalizing disabled people. I would like to solicit roundtable panelists who work with first-person experiences rooted in past events that have become increasingly relevant today, exploring effective ways to deliver these memories to the public. While I am focused on oral history, I welcome panelists who collect these voices in various ways, including community archives, fiction and non-fiction writings, podcast interviews, etc.
I would also like to seek feedback on combining the project mentioned earlier in disability history with my other project in science history, where I interview immigrant scientists and scientists with disabilities. As a curatorial fellow at the Science History Institute in Philadelphia, I am building an audio guide that introduces the voices of these minority scientists, diversifying the representations of scientists beyond the stereotype of an old white man wearing a lab coat. I hope to bring scientists closer to the public through this project because the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the widening gap between these two groups. While these two oral history projects in the history of disability and history of science may take on different approaches, comparing the two could indicate to public historians the various ways to use oral histories or other first-person narratives as a tool to engage with the public.
If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to pass along someone’s contact information confidentially, please get in contact directly: Shuko Tamao, Science History Institute of Philadelphia, [email protected]
ALL FEEDBACK AND OFFERS OF ASSISTANCE SHOULD BE SUBMITTED BY JULY 7, 2023. If you have general ideas or feedback to share, please feel free to use the comments feature below.
I see that you have not received any comments. I’m hoping you’ve been able to find co-presenters through other sources, as this seems like an interesting topic. I wonder if perhaps you might get more interest if your proposal were framed more narrowly to focus on disability history. We are only two years away from the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, yet, as you note, many people still do not feel protected. How can we best document the past and how can we use that past to inform current understandings of the issues? I would also like to see a discussion about intersectionality within disability history, as people of color or those who identify as LGBTQIA+ have often been excluded from disability histories.
Shuko, the session proposal is interesting and thank you for providing some background information about your interest/research. I would suggest you narrow your focus for the roundtable discussion. Are you focusing on disabled people which also include mental health? Your abstract invites discussion of how public historians and other cultures specialists and communities collect/preserve oral histories. If you are inviting this broad perspective for the roundtable discussion, I would encourage you to pursue the various ways that memories are collected. I know some museums have partnered with health organizations to offer art therapy which also includes memory cafés to collect oral histories through storytelling and music activities. To invite presenters for your roundtable discussion, perhaps, reach out to art museums, art therapist and/or living history museums to explore different methodology of collecting memories.
Best to you on your session.
Shuko, fascinating ideas here! Consider reaching out to Clarence Jefferson Hall, Jr. whose work may be related to your vision, or he may know someone whose work is.