Serious Play: Oral History and the Art of Story

This course, in the Oral History Master of Arts program at Columbia University, is co-developed and co-taught with my incredible friend and colleague Liza Zapol. Since 2015, we have been working and playing and experimenting together in questions of how the tools and language of the arts can deepen the practice of oral history. We have led our Push Play workshops on this subject widely, and Serious Play is a semester-long deep dive. Course description below.

Course Description

In this course, OHMA students will deepen their exploration of core tensions in the practice of oral history through close readings and creation of narrative art in a range of genres and forms, including writing, performance, film*, visual art, and sound. What do we do, as oral historians, makers, and scholars, when our responsibilities to narrators are in tension with responsibilities to “the story” — to historical truth, or narrative effectiveness, or an artist’s aesthetic choices? What lines are marked by conventions of genre, and how do those compare to lines drawn by the ethics of oral history? When are these lines crossed, to what end, and to whose benefit? Who benefits from the telling of any story? Who is a narrative accountable to? Ultimately, whose story is it? How can an oral historical lens hone our contributions – critical and creative – to contemporary culture and scholarship, and how can such work engage the ongoing dialogue within our field around what oral history is, and can be?

(Photos below are from select Push Play workshops over the years.)