ISP 392: DePaul Documentary Corps Internship (Spring 2021)

Course Description

In this four-credit internship course, developed as part of DePaul’s HumanitiesX initiative, you will document and preserve critical experiences related to our current time of challenge and change. Our primary work will be to conduct, process, and edit remote interviews with DePaul students, staff, alumni, and community partners, on topics including the pandemic and the ongoing struggle for racial justice. We will work in close partnership with DePaul’s Special Collections and Archives, which will preserve the materials we collect, and for whom we will develop digital projects to foster engagement with these materials. Finally, in keeping with the HumanitiesX goals to connect students with Chicago’s arts and culture organizations, museums, and libraries, ISP 392 will feature guest visits from professionals who work in these settings.

By the end of the course, you will be able to:

  • Conduct a successful extended one-on-one interview, drawing on techniques from oral history and related fields
  • Articulate how documentary and oral history methods can be applied in different community and professional settings
  • Use selected audio, documentary, and processing technologies with basic proficiency, including audio recording tools, audio editing software, transcription and indexing software, and online collection-management and sharing tools
  • Respond to moments of crisis and change with appropriate documentary methods
  • Apply ethical concepts at all stages of a documentary or oral history project

Readings & Resources

book

Yow, V. R. (2014). Recording oral history: A guide for the humanities and social sciences, 3rd ed.. Rowman & Littlefield. [please be sure to get the 3rd edition]

chapters & articles

Chenier, E. (2018). Oral history’s afterlife. In K. Srigley, S. Zembrzycki, & F. Iacovetta (Eds.), Beyond women’s words: Feminisms and the practices of oral history in the twenty-first century (pp. 304–312). Routledge.

Faulkenbury, E. (2020). Journalism, COVID-19, and the opportunity of oral history. The Oral History Review, 47(2), 253-259.

Larson, M. (2018). The medium is political and the message is personal: Feminist oral histories online. In K. Srigley, S. Zembrzycki, & F. Iacovetta (Eds.), Beyond women’s words: Feminisms and the practices of oral history in the twenty-first century (pp. 298–303). Routledge.

videos & online resources

CreativeLive (2016, May 21). Brandon Stanton and the Art of an Effective Interview: https://youtu.be/Cl8dremuIDM

Dropmark Collection of Oral Histories and Documentaries: https://profdush.dropmark.com/896475  

Luster, D. (2018, June 29). Archives Have the Power to Boost Marginalized Voices | TEDxPittsburgh. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsNPlBBi1IE

Nunn Center. (2014, August 21). Using OHMS to Index Oral History: A Detailed Tutorial. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvfweBl586g

Oklahoma State Libraries. The Oral History Process. (2019, October 11). Retrieved October 5, 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcJPxV-ymZQ

Oral History Centre. (2016, April 27). Alessandro Portelli – Speaking of Oral History. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEToq3T_LZQ

OHMA Columbia. (2016, January 5). The Oral History Centre: What is Oral History? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk3gb9xCTFo

Assignments

  1. CITI PROGRAM HUMAN SUBJECTS COURSE & ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW TRAINING (5%): To prepare to ethically and professionally conduct oral history interviews, you will complete two activities: 1) the Basic Human Subjects online training course offered by the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) Program, and 2) an in-class oral history training session. You will be graded on your on-time completion of and engagement in these two trainings.
  2. INTERVIEW #1 (20%): By week 5, you will complete one 30-45-minute interview with a personal contact or a peer. This interview will be submitted with a summary, an index, a photograph of the narrator, a partial transcript, and all necessary consent and release forms.
  3. HIGHLIGHTS STORY (10%): Using the audio file of Interview #1, you will isolate several of the most compelling moments and responses from the interview, extract them using audio-editing software, and construct a cohesive, <3-minute audio story.
  4. FORMAL REFLECTION & INDIVIDUAL CONFERENCE (15%): To develop as an interviewer and documentary practitioner, you will reflect on your emerging practice, often through the lens of our course readings. This reflection will happen in polished, short D2L posts and one reflection paper (approx. 1000 words). You will also have a required individual conference with Prof. Dush to debrief on your first interview and plan for your second.
  5. INTERVIEW #2 (30%): You will compete a 30-45-minute interview with a personal or professional contact or a person identified by the Documentary Corps team. The interview will be submitted with a summary, an index, a photograph of the interviewee, a transcript, and all necessary consent and release forms.
  6. CONTRIBUTIONS TO DOCUMENTARY CORPS PROJECTS (15%): As a class, we will work with Special Collections and Archives to promote, synthesize, and circulate the work of the Documentary Corps. You will join one of four teams—the audio documentary, project documentation, archives, or qualitative research team—and with your team, complete project-specific deliverables.
  7. PARTICIPATION AND ENGAGEMENT WITH GUESTS (5%): ISP 392 relies on the engagement of students with each other and with guests. As such, your preparation for and engagement with both your peers and our guests is a graded activity.