Community Workshops and Events
Oral History Community Workshops
Learn the basics of oral history: asking questions, active listening, transcription tips, and how to preserve the stories of Worcester women. Do you want to help collect women's stories? Interested in the memories of relatives for a family history? Join members of the Worcester Women's Oral History Project for informative workshops on how to collect and share the experiences of Worcester women.
Workshops were developed with the help of Lisa Krissoff Boehm, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Urban Studies at Worcester State College and Regional Director of the New England branch of the Consortium of Oral History Educators (COHE). She is the author of Popular Culture and the Enduring Myth of Chicago and Making a Way Out of No Way: African American Women, Domestic Work, and the Second Great Migration, 1940-1970, which employs oral histories. She wrote a chapter for the work, Preparing the Next Generation of Oral Historians. Spanish workshops are available with translation by Pablo Guerra and Diana Ojeda, and Judy Freedman Fask, M.Ed., Director of American Sign Language and Deaf Studies at College of the Holy Cross is available to advise on interviews conducted with the deaf community. Specially tailored workshops are available for a fee for local social, religious, or educational groups. Please call 508-767-1852 or e-mail info [at] wwhp [dot] org to request a private workshop.
NEXT WORKSHOP: Saturday, 3/23/2013 2:00 PM-4:00 PM
College of the Holy Cross: Hogan Campus Center, 1 College Street, Worcester, MA - Free
Oral History Events
The Oral History Project offers annual events that are open to the public. Events typically involve authors of oral histories and often include student presentations of oral histories of Worcester area women.
Voices from Vietnam: Women Warriors and a New War Story
December 11, 2012 5:30 p.m. Worcester Public Library
Dr. Karen Turner, film maker, writer, and College of the Holy Cross professor presented her documentary, Hidden Warriors: Women on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This film focuses on the vast number of North Vietnamese women who went to war, a piece of history that is often overlooked. The film contains archival footage from Hanoi and it documents the daily lives and struggles of these women who helped build and defend the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The film is based on Dr. Turner’s book, Even the Women Must Fight: Memories of War from North Vietnam, which she co-authored with Phan Thanh Hao, a Vietnamese journalist. Using oral histories, private letters, and diaries, the authors delve into the important role North Vietnamese women played during the war.
Dr. Karen Turner with Dr. Kristen Waters
December 6, 2011: Co-chairs of the Worcester Women's Oral History Project, Maureen Ryan Doyle and Charlene L. Martin, presented their new book, Voices of Worcester Women: 160 Years after the First National Woman's Rights Convention. They discussed how they researched and selected excerpts from the more than 250 oral histories from the WWOHP.
Maureen Ryan Doyle and Charlene L. Martin
December 2, 2010: Dr. Kathryn Allamong Jacob, Curator of Manuscripts, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, presents Dear Diary: 100+ Years of Women's Private Writing.
Linda Rosenlund, Charlene Martin, Dr. Jacob, Maureen Ryan Doyle Dr. Jacob with Assumption College Student Presenters
December 10, 2009: Dr. Stephen Knott, presidential oral historian and author of At Reagan's Side: Insiders' Recollections from Sacremento to the White House.
Dr. Knott with Assumption College student presenters and OHP Co-chairs, Charlene L. Martin, Maureen Ryan Doyle, and Founding Chair, Linda Rosenlund
April 20, 2009: Dr. Lisa Krissoff Boehm, oral historian and author of Making a Way Out of No Way: African American Women and the Second Great Migration.
