The Social Hall:
An Oral History Exhibit
By the 2013 OHMA Cohort, May 1, 2014
Curated by Suzanne Snider, OHMA Fieldwork Instructor
Check out the full event description on the OHMA blog
Columbia University’s Oral History Master of
Arts 2013-2014 cohort is proud to present Social Hall, an exhibition of complex projects that both challenge and advance the field of oral history. By considering multimedia applications and social presentations, we wish to introduce a new audience to the field and to share its significance in our world, both past and present.
Social Hall is made up of individual projects that address a wide range of topics, including Argentina’s struggle for memory in a post-dictatorship society, a woman’s journey from Fort Mojave Indian Tribe to Yale University, the explorations of a scrap diver, definition of community in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and a documentary on Black men during the era of Black Power and Black Nationalism. These projects are connected through their dependence on oral history and their engagement with living individuals, our narrators.
This exhibit features thirteen graduate student projects that collectively utilize voice, video, transcription, live demonstrations and more to explore such subjects as memory, geography, narrative structures, and love. Meet with OHMA staff and faculty, and learn about the ways oral history can make use of new media. Social Hall is the culmination of OHMA student fieldwork and thesis projects from spring 2014.
