Hi.
I'm exhausted. (Although just reading this article in the Chronicle made me appreciate my lifestyle as a quasi-academic. No, an academic. I may be an administrator, but let's be honest and call it what it is.)
I just spent about 2 1/2 hours transcribing 30 minutes of tape. This is why I have in the past paid to have someone else do it. The problem is you lose the intimacy that you have with the audio file when you transcribe it yourself. The quality of their transcripts was fine, it's just that I wasn't disciplined enough to listen to the audio file and read through the transcript unless I was forcing myself to be the one doing the typing.
It is exhausting though and perhaps after a few more hours of it I will give up and give in.
One great quote, however (cleaned up a bit):
"Underlying all this that I'm going to say to you is based upon the anomaly in this country with regard to any kind of thing, and somebody once said to me, you Americans never do anything unless there's a crisis. So the first crisis was of course World War I, World War II, and we had decided that we ought to have Americans learn other languages." Dr. Alatis
Friday, February 27, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Dr. James Alatis
Is the best.
Also, he has agreed to participate in my oral history dissertation. It's a monumental task. I think I'm up for it. I feel pretty up for it, at least.
Find out more about Dr. Alatis.
Also, he has agreed to participate in my oral history dissertation. It's a monumental task. I think I'm up for it. I feel pretty up for it, at least.
Find out more about Dr. Alatis.
Monday, February 23, 2009
William Riley Parker
Is quickly becoming my new hero. He was the Executive Director of the Modern Language Association from... eeeh... well, that seems to be a bit hard to track down. What I can say right now is that it was in the '50s.
What's nuts is that there's so little real information on this guy - no Wikipedia page, nothing on the MLA site except for a prize named in his honor. Maybe this is like a mini-project that I can work on in the meantime. I'm sure my dissertation participant will have some salient information.
What's nuts is that there's so little real information on this guy - no Wikipedia page, nothing on the MLA site except for a prize named in his honor. Maybe this is like a mini-project that I can work on in the meantime. I'm sure my dissertation participant will have some salient information.
Friday, February 20, 2009
an oldie but goodie - the kiss by anne sexton
Thought of this poem today while getting my hair done. I read it for the first time at Duke Young Writer's Camp when I was 14. Summer, North Carolina, a beautiful campus and poetry. Who could ask for anything more?
This is from memory.. so it's more or less correct..
my mouth blooms like a cut
i've been wronged all year, tedious
nights, nothing but rough elbows in them and
tedious boxes of kleenex calling
crybaby, crybaby you fool!
before today my body was useless,
now it's tearing at its square corners,
tearing old Mary's garments off
and now it's shot full of these electric bolts
and see - Zing! a resurrection!
Once it was a boat, quite wooden.
It was nothing more than a group of boards.
but you hoisted her, rigged her.
she's been elected.
my nerves are turned on .... i hear them like musical instruments....
where once there was silence the drums, the strings are incurably playing.
You did this.
Darling, the composer has stepped into fire.
Or something like that. You can Google it and see if I came close. I wonder why that poem was the one that came to my mind, rather than say, "An Irish Airman Forsees His Death" or "The Second Coming" both by Yeats or that one by Gerald Manley Hopkins about the ooze of oil crushed... all poems I have more or less committed to memory over the years because once a professor said it was a shame no one did that anymore and also because in my favorite childhood book, there was a mouse who helped his friends through the long winter by telling stories.
This is from memory.. so it's more or less correct..
my mouth blooms like a cut
i've been wronged all year, tedious
nights, nothing but rough elbows in them and
tedious boxes of kleenex calling
crybaby, crybaby you fool!
before today my body was useless,
now it's tearing at its square corners,
tearing old Mary's garments off
and now it's shot full of these electric bolts
and see - Zing! a resurrection!
Once it was a boat, quite wooden.
It was nothing more than a group of boards.
but you hoisted her, rigged her.
she's been elected.
my nerves are turned on .... i hear them like musical instruments....
where once there was silence the drums, the strings are incurably playing.
You did this.
Darling, the composer has stepped into fire.
Or something like that. You can Google it and see if I came close. I wonder why that poem was the one that came to my mind, rather than say, "An Irish Airman Forsees His Death" or "The Second Coming" both by Yeats or that one by Gerald Manley Hopkins about the ooze of oil crushed... all poems I have more or less committed to memory over the years because once a professor said it was a shame no one did that anymore and also because in my favorite childhood book, there was a mouse who helped his friends through the long winter by telling stories.
It's a research day... notes from a bunch of articles...
Wow. I just realized that all my posts on the front page of my blog are from February. That hasn't happened in awhile.
The book I'm reading smells like old book. But contains some important points, so I will proceed with the review.
Hoffman, Alice. "Reliability and Validity." In Dunaway, David K and Willa K. Baum, Eds., Oral History: An Interdisciplinary Anthology. Nashville, TN: American Association for State and Local History in cooperation with the Oral History Association, 1984. (clearly I need to learn how to cite correctly. Whatever. You get the idea.) First appeared in Today's Speech 22 (Winter 1974), pp. 23-27.
"One of the persistent challenges presented by scholars to oral history regards the reliability and the validity of the interviews. In this connection reliability can be defined as the consistency with which an individual will tell the same story about the same events on a number of different occasions. Validity refers to the degree of conformity between the reports of the event itself as recorded by other primary resource material such as documents, photographs, diaries, and letters. Now, while it is inconceivable that an oral report might be a true description of an event, its validity cannot really be tested unless it can be measured against some body of evidence. Without such evidence, an isolated description of an event becomes a bit of esoterica whose worth cannot be properly identified." (p.69-70).
Tuchman, Barbara. "The Significant and the Insignificant." in the book cited above. First appeared in Radcliffe Quarterly 56 (October 1972), pp. 9-10.
"The chief difficulty in contemporary history is over-documentation or what has been called, less charitably, the multiplication of rubbish... with all sorts of people being invited merely to open their mouths, and ramble effortlessly and endlessly into a tape recorder, prodded daily by an acolyte of Oral History, a few veins of gold and a vast mass of trash are being preserved which would otherwise have gone to dust. We are drowning ourselves in uneeded information." (p. 76)
Cutler III, William. "Accuracy in Interviewing." Same, Ibid, whatevs. First appeared in Historical Methods Newsletter 3 (June 1970), pp. 1-7.
Basically he says that interviewees have a tendency to inflate or deflate their role in events, that they are concerned for posterity and warp the truth, and that the interviewer must be prepared with information but even then it might not help him get an accurate interview.
Friedlander, Peter. "Theory, Method, and Oral History." Same.
Refutes idea that validity must come from a triangulation of archival records, because in his stody of the Local 229 of the UAW, census data breaks up the individuals into foreign and non-foreign born, but among the latter he sees three distinct groups in his interviews with Local president Edumund Kord. No archival or document record of these groups exists. He writes that "the same problems [of a lack of documentary evidence] emerge in regard to other major questions," which include phenomenological queries such as how the workers experienced their relationship to authority, who were the leaders and what was the structure of leadership within the group, and how the workers' struggle for power impacted their personal lives and sense of social class or status. (p. 133).
The book I'm reading smells like old book. But contains some important points, so I will proceed with the review.
Hoffman, Alice. "Reliability and Validity." In Dunaway, David K and Willa K. Baum, Eds., Oral History: An Interdisciplinary Anthology. Nashville, TN: American Association for State and Local History in cooperation with the Oral History Association, 1984. (clearly I need to learn how to cite correctly. Whatever. You get the idea.) First appeared in Today's Speech 22 (Winter 1974), pp. 23-27.
"One of the persistent challenges presented by scholars to oral history regards the reliability and the validity of the interviews. In this connection reliability can be defined as the consistency with which an individual will tell the same story about the same events on a number of different occasions. Validity refers to the degree of conformity between the reports of the event itself as recorded by other primary resource material such as documents, photographs, diaries, and letters. Now, while it is inconceivable that an oral report might be a true description of an event, its validity cannot really be tested unless it can be measured against some body of evidence. Without such evidence, an isolated description of an event becomes a bit of esoterica whose worth cannot be properly identified." (p.69-70).
Tuchman, Barbara. "The Significant and the Insignificant." in the book cited above. First appeared in Radcliffe Quarterly 56 (October 1972), pp. 9-10.
"The chief difficulty in contemporary history is over-documentation or what has been called, less charitably, the multiplication of rubbish... with all sorts of people being invited merely to open their mouths, and ramble effortlessly and endlessly into a tape recorder, prodded daily by an acolyte of Oral History, a few veins of gold and a vast mass of trash are being preserved which would otherwise have gone to dust. We are drowning ourselves in uneeded information." (p. 76)
Cutler III, William. "Accuracy in Interviewing." Same, Ibid, whatevs. First appeared in Historical Methods Newsletter 3 (June 1970), pp. 1-7.
Basically he says that interviewees have a tendency to inflate or deflate their role in events, that they are concerned for posterity and warp the truth, and that the interviewer must be prepared with information but even then it might not help him get an accurate interview.
Friedlander, Peter. "Theory, Method, and Oral History." Same.
Refutes idea that validity must come from a triangulation of archival records, because in his stody of the Local 229 of the UAW, census data breaks up the individuals into foreign and non-foreign born, but among the latter he sees three distinct groups in his interviews with Local president Edumund Kord. No archival or document record of these groups exists. He writes that "the same problems [of a lack of documentary evidence] emerge in regard to other major questions," which include phenomenological queries such as how the workers experienced their relationship to authority, who were the leaders and what was the structure of leadership within the group, and how the workers' struggle for power impacted their personal lives and sense of social class or status. (p. 133).
The fourth paradigm transformation of oral history
I just read an article about four paradigm shifts in oral history. The first was the conceptualization of oral history as valid for the modern, post WWII era. With the advent of radio, tape recorders, video, and similar technologies, oral recordings began to be placed alongside archival records as authentic and valid records of history. In a second paradigm shift, oral historians created a special place for memory as a valid source of history against positivist (ahem - conservative) critics who claimed that because memory was faulty or because participants remembered the past fondly, oral records lacked validity. Oral historians responded by pointing out that the silences and misremembrances of the past provided valid insight into the relationship of the past and the present. In a third paradigm, oral history became interdisciplinary. Oral historians used feminist studies and identity studies to query the relationship between narrator and historian.
Now we are in what Thomson calls the fourth paradigm of the digital era. As we are able to digitize audio and video records, will digital records replace the boxes of paper records I've searched through in my oral history project? Since we can touch-type, we create more text than anyone can possibly read... think of all the blogs out there with 2 readers. Ahem. But if someone were to conduct an oral history on me... would this blog replace the need for my voice? How would you go through the archival records if everything is on a computer, tied to an email account that someone no longer has access to? If those records, like letters in an archive, are important - should we think about how we are saving them? Digitizing records holds great possibility for providing more people with access to knowledge, but it also runs the risk of losing a great deal of items that previously would have been saved.
An interesting problem. Also I find that if I write a blog post in response to what I read, I tend to remember it better, so also an academic exercise for me.
Thomson, Alistair. "Four Paradigm Transformations in Oral History" published on January 1, 2007, Oral History Review 34: 49-70.
Now we are in what Thomson calls the fourth paradigm of the digital era. As we are able to digitize audio and video records, will digital records replace the boxes of paper records I've searched through in my oral history project? Since we can touch-type, we create more text than anyone can possibly read... think of all the blogs out there with 2 readers. Ahem. But if someone were to conduct an oral history on me... would this blog replace the need for my voice? How would you go through the archival records if everything is on a computer, tied to an email account that someone no longer has access to? If those records, like letters in an archive, are important - should we think about how we are saving them? Digitizing records holds great possibility for providing more people with access to knowledge, but it also runs the risk of losing a great deal of items that previously would have been saved.
An interesting problem. Also I find that if I write a blog post in response to what I read, I tend to remember it better, so also an academic exercise for me.
Thomson, Alistair. "Four Paradigm Transformations in Oral History" published on January 1, 2007, Oral History Review 34: 49-70.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
The tedium of research
Today was kind of a bummer, because I went all the way to Georgetown to discover that I had gotten my oral history participant's office hours wrong. OK, you know that because I've already posted it twice. I'll delete that. Blackberry blogging snafu.
Now I'm engaged in the tedium of research. No, folks, it's not all big ideas, unfortunately. (Although lately I have had a lot of big ideas, which result in me forgetting where my keys are, me dropping my check card in the hallway, much to the bemusement of my colleagues). Big ideas are great, but making them work requires tedium. For oral history, this tedium includes digging through archives, transcribing interviews, and, as I'm doing right now, scanning books that apparently only exist in the University of South Florida Library, are on loan to me from the University of Maryland, and which are already a week past due date. OK make that 10 days.
It's not all fun and games - it's deadlines and IRB approval and digging through papers that have no bearing on what you're doing. But I guess it is a labor of love, because despite the tedium I do love what I'm doing. And I'm sure there's an easier way to make PDFs out of my scans of this book, but because I'm thinking about The Next Big Idea I seem unable to figure out how.
Big Ideas become nothing without the tedious labor to make them work. And that's my Big Idea for the day.
Now I'm engaged in the tedium of research. No, folks, it's not all big ideas, unfortunately. (Although lately I have had a lot of big ideas, which result in me forgetting where my keys are, me dropping my check card in the hallway, much to the bemusement of my colleagues). Big ideas are great, but making them work requires tedium. For oral history, this tedium includes digging through archives, transcribing interviews, and, as I'm doing right now, scanning books that apparently only exist in the University of South Florida Library, are on loan to me from the University of Maryland, and which are already a week past due date. OK make that 10 days.
It's not all fun and games - it's deadlines and IRB approval and digging through papers that have no bearing on what you're doing. But I guess it is a labor of love, because despite the tedium I do love what I'm doing. And I'm sure there's an easier way to make PDFs out of my scans of this book, but because I'm thinking about The Next Big Idea I seem unable to figure out how.
Big Ideas become nothing without the tedious labor to make them work. And that's my Big Idea for the day.
i missed him!
I made it all the way to georgetown and my oral history participant had office hours earlier than i thought (and than his department told me they were) and i just missed him. So disappointed. Fits and starts so far for this research.
A response to an article from 1999... ok so I'm a bit late.
Response to Dougherty, Jack. “From Anecdote to Analysis: Oral Interviews and New Scholarship in Educational History.” The Journal of American History. September 1999.
I'm working on this response to an article about developing more scientific validity in oral history. Those things just don't seem to match up. I was thinking about it last night and decided to just start writing as a way to try and figure out my thoughts. Basically, I see oral history as, well, history. While more stories definitely add to the validity of history, I don't think that the language and concepts that govern other social science research will add validity to oral history. Things like getting a sample size that is representative of... well, whatever population you're going to study... that's how you would build a social science research design.
So what, I'm supposed to find a sampling of 80-year old deans emeriti from Georgetown who worked in foreign and second language education? Oh wait - yeah, there aren't too many of those. I'm being cute, but you see my point. More stories can triangulate your data, but using that language suggests that oral history is generalizable. History is not generalizable - it stems from a certain historical and cultural moment.
I'm still working out the details here. I like the idea of taking the terms reliability and validity which are used in social science research design and talking about how they mean different things for oral history. Ultimately, it becomes a question of ethics - is the oral historian handling the testimony of their participants in an ethical way? The answer determines whether or not the research is reliable and valid.
I'm working on this response to an article about developing more scientific validity in oral history. Those things just don't seem to match up. I was thinking about it last night and decided to just start writing as a way to try and figure out my thoughts. Basically, I see oral history as, well, history. While more stories definitely add to the validity of history, I don't think that the language and concepts that govern other social science research will add validity to oral history. Things like getting a sample size that is representative of... well, whatever population you're going to study... that's how you would build a social science research design.
So what, I'm supposed to find a sampling of 80-year old deans emeriti from Georgetown who worked in foreign and second language education? Oh wait - yeah, there aren't too many of those. I'm being cute, but you see my point. More stories can triangulate your data, but using that language suggests that oral history is generalizable. History is not generalizable - it stems from a certain historical and cultural moment.
I'm still working out the details here. I like the idea of taking the terms reliability and validity which are used in social science research design and talking about how they mean different things for oral history. Ultimately, it becomes a question of ethics - is the oral historian handling the testimony of their participants in an ethical way? The answer determines whether or not the research is reliable and valid.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Dissertation reserach begins tomorrow...
I officially begin my dissertation research tomorrow. "Interview"/ explaining to the subject of my dissertation that he is in fact the subject of my dissertation begins tomorrow at 3pm.
OK. That's about all I had to say.
OK. That's about all I had to say.
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