Oral Histories

The University of Michigan-Dearborn Oral Histories houses unique projects that represent significant aspects of our academic and cultural landscapes.

  Michigan Iranian American Oral History Project  

With support from a Michigan Humanities Council Heritage Grant and University of Michigan-Dearborn Development Grant, the MIAOHP collected 14 interviews in its first phase from 2016-2018. All interviews were recorded in southeast Michigan, either at the Journalism and Screen Studies Studio on campus or at an off-campus location chosen by the interviewee. For the past three years, we’ve been working to index, transcribe, and display these interviews on an accessible and discoverable site hosted by Mardigan Library.

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  Spanish Identity Through Food Oral Histories Collection  

Different interviews will be conducted both in Spain and outside the Spanish contest to help understand global and local manifestations of (and changes to) Spanish identity as expressed through discussions of dishes, recipes, products, or techniques of food preparation. Information from the interviews will be mapped to media archetypes and stereotypes about "Spain." In addition to modifying OHMS, this project develops a data visualization interface to permit researchers to quickly connect interviews/transcripts with contextualizing material (e.g. geospatial information, cultural information, academic studies) and compare information across the digitized collection. The digital prototypes developed for the MIAOHP and Spanish Identity Through Food will not only help bring these particular communities' knowledge from the margins to an accessible center, but also serve as a useful case study in the digital humanities.

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  Voice Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive  

The Voice/Vision Archive is a unique, widely accessible repository of video and audio taped oral history interviews conducted with Holocaust survivors from 1981 to 2011. The archive, which primarily contains interviews with Holocaust survivors from the Detroit metropolitan area, was established at the University of Michigan-Dearborn by Professor of History Sidney Bolkosky, who conducted the bulk of the interviews. The archive aims to serve as a foundation for quality Holocaust education and research, both globally and locally.

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