Amplified Initiative Oral History Association

Today’s episode is the presentation of an exciting project for anyone interested in teaching or learning about history. The OAH panel “Democratizing the American History Textbook: Mass Collaboration and The American Yawp” describes a year-long collaboration of more than 350 historians to produce The American Yawp (www.americanyawp.com/), a free and online, open-source American history Textbook.
This is an episode of the Amplified Initiative, a project of the Organization of American Historians (oah.org) and presented by the Oral History Association (oralhistory.org). This project from the Organization of American Historians aims to broaden the impact of the OAH’s 2018 conference by asking partner organizations to develop material, based on the conference panels, that will be shared with each partner’s specific audience.
Launched as a radical experiment in mass collaboration and institution-free pedagogy the Yawp was only a logical extension of the democratic promise that history can be open source.
Panelists discuss how scholars can collaborate across institutions, the future of the textbook in teh digital age, the role of the university press in balancing access with professional standards, and other questions.
Chair: Kathryn Tomasek, Wheaton College, Massachusetts
Panelists:
• Ben Wright, University of Texas at Dallas
• Joseph Locke, University of Houston–Victoria
• Margo Irvin, Stanford University Press
• Angela Esco Elder, Converse College
You can listen to the full version of this panel, as well as other presentations that didn’t make into the podcast, at oah.pathwright.com.

Today we listen to the panel “Storytelling and African American Women's Biography.” Presented at the OAH’s April 2018 conference, the panel compares the possibilities and pitfalls of telling black women’s stories in the traditional form of biography versus the format of film. It also considers the forms that biography takes when the subjects present challenges to linear storytelling.
This is an episode of the Amplified Initiative, a project of the Organization of American Historians (oah.org) and presented by the Oral History Association (oralhistory.org). This project from the Organization of American Historians aims to broaden the impact of the OAH’s 2018 conference by asking partner organizations to develop material, based on the conference panels, that will be shared with each partner’s specific audience.
Chair: Lynn Hudson, University of Illinois at Chicago
Panelists: Cynthia Blair, University of Illinois at Chicago
You can listen to the full version of this panel, as well as other presentations that didn’t make into the podcast, at oah.pathwright.com.

What do magicians, historians, and performers have in common? Find out in today’s episode of Amplified Initiative where we’ll listen in on the panel “Feeling Is Believing: Embodied Practices of Popular History.”
The Amplified Initiative is a project of the Organization of American Historians (oah.org) and presented by the Oral History Association (oralhistory.org). This project from the Organization of American Historians aims to broaden the impact of the OAH’s 2018 conference by asking partner organizations to develop material, based on the conference panels, that will be shared with each partner’s specific audience.
When considering “forms” of history, we tend to think of those that are self-consciously pedagogical and/or interpretive: the monograph, the lecture, the commemoration, the museum. Scholars interested in popular history have also added television, film, and more popular forms to this list, but embodied engagements (that is, interactions where meaning is made at the site of the body) are often understudied. We assume that “history” is kept separate from the knowledge-producing or appraising subject, who we still think of as a sort of “blank slate,” and who learns about and makes meaning from the past quite apart from their own experience or sense of self. It is only recently that scholars working across several fields (history, performance studies, theatre studies, affect studies) have begun to take seriously the ways that people make historical meaning through embodied engagement.
This panel examines the way in which forms of history that involve the body as the primary site of discovery and meaning-making, has intersected and interacted with its surrounding popular culture.
Chair and Commentator: Amy Tyson, DePaul University
Panelists: Malgorzata Joanna Rymsza-Pawlowska, American University Michelle Liu Carriger, University of California, Los Angeles Aileen Robinson, Stanford University
You can listen to the full version of this panel, as well as other presentations that didn’t make into the podcast, at oah.pathwright.com.

This is an episode of the Amplified Initiative, a project of the Organization of American Historians (oah.org) and presented by the Oral History Association (oralhistory.org). This project aims to broaden the impact of the OAH’s 2018 conference by asking partner organizations to develop material, based on the conference panels, that will be shared with each partner’s specific audience.
In this episode we are listening to the Beyond the Monograph, Beyond the Margins: The Challenge of Interpretative and Inclusive Histories. This roundtable brings together five scholars who are committed to presenting cutting edge research within their respective fields to non-academics. As experts in disability history, indigenous history, and Chicana/o history, they hope to deepen and broaden the public’s understanding of the American past by offering sweeping interpretative histories that challenge more familiar narratives. In pursuit of this goal, they individually have contributed to museum exhibitions, offered public lectures, and written surveys aimed at the widest possible audience.
Chair: Catherine Kudlick, San Francisco State University
Panelists:
• Lorena Oropeza, University of California, Davis
• Catherine Kudlick, San Francisco State University
• Paul Ortiz, University of Florida, Samuel Proctor Oral History Program
You can listen to the full version of this panel, as well as other presentations that didn’t make into the podcast, at oah.pathwright.com.

This is an episode of the Amplified Initiative, a project of the Organization of American Historians (oah.org) and presented by the Oral History Association (oralhistory.org). The project aims to broaden the impact of the OAH’s 2018 conference by asking partner organizations to develop material, based on the conference panels, that will be shared with each partner’s specific audience.
This is an edited recording of the panel “Arming Citizens: Public Historians and Civic Engagement.” Public historians are uniquely positioned to effect change in today’s social confusion. Through public programming, exhibitions, and the collecting and making available of the works and words of often marginalized people; we can foster environments of greater understanding-- and societal change. A cross-generational, cross-racial panel discusses ways history professionals should construct history with others.
Participants were: Heather Huyck, the National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites; Noelle Trent, The National Civil Rights Museum; and Erin Devlin, the University of Mary Washington.
You can listen to the full version of this panel, as well as other presentations that didn’t make into the podcast, at oah.pathwright.com.

This is an episode of the Amplified Initiative, a project of the Organization of American Historians (oah.org) and presented by the Oral History Association (oralhistory.org).
This project aims to broaden the impact of the OAH’s 2018 conference by asking partner organizations to develop material, based on the conference panels, that will be shared with each partner’s specific audience.
In this installment we are listening to an edited version of the panel Sexuality and Oral History: The Challenges of Public and Private Knowledge. This panel, like the others in our series, was part of the Organization of American Historians April 2018 conference.
Chair and Commentator: Natalie Marine-Street, Stanford University, Stanford Historical Society Oral History Program Panelists: Estelle Freedman, Stanford University Kwame Holmes, University of Colorado, Boulder Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo, Saint Mary’s College of California
You can listen to the full version of this panel, as well as other presentations that didn’t make into the podcast, at oah.pathwright.com.