A Primer in Oral History Methodology

Because my department does not offer a regular course or training in oral history, I had to teach myself how, exactly, one goes about interviewing people about their pasts.  When I interned at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in 2012, I had the good fortune to observe another intern as she worked on an oral history project for an upcoming exhibit. She was also a graduate student, but in a program specializing in public history. As part of her training, she took a course that discussed the ethics and best practices of oral history as well as the practicalities of interviewing. From our discussions, I learned that it was not as simple as sitting down with someone, turning on a tape recorder, and asking them questions. 

Three years later, as I began to prepare for my own project, I recalled this colleague and her giant  textbook on oral history. I turned to the internet to find my own guide, and after reading several reviews settled upon Donald A. Ritchie's Doing Oral History. I liked that it combined a theoretical discussion of the practice with a step-by-step guide to setting up a new project. While there are many brilliant texts out there that delve into the ethics of representation, the power dynamics inherent in the interview process, and the problems of memory, I felt that for my small, limited project I only needed a summary of these major debates.

I found the second and third chapters of Doing Oral History to be most useful for preparing well-structured interviews questions. Ritchie stresses that interviews should elicit remembrances relevant beyond the scope of a narrow project so that other historians may find them useful, and so I have taken great care to ask each interviewee a few questions about parts their lives unrelated to the events I am studying. Even more importantly, Ritchie emphasizes that questions should not lead interviewees to confirm hypotheses. Without reading his advice, I probably would have unwittingly asked questions that were too specific. My attempts to solicit the information I needed might have limited my subjects' responses in ways that, although confirming my argument, obscured feelings and events that complicated or contradicted my interpretation. 

I also relied on a few other sources for thinking about responsible consent practices for my interviews. Most basic, but also most helpful, is the Oral History Association's Principles and Best Practices.  I also really liked the section on "Establishing Ethical Relationships" in the Baylor University Institute for Oral History's "Introduction to Oral History." Finally, the informed consent form I drafted for my project is loosely modeled after this one from Boston College.

Now that I have four interviews under my belt, I think it's safe to say that without these resources I may have gotten the job done, but not done well. While there are still things I want to improve about my interview technique--more on that later--I'm getting the information I need to better understand the history of Washington Heights-Inwood and the YM-YWHA. 

Stop, Collaborate and Listen

I received generous grant funding to spend July conducting oral history interviews for my dissertation. Oral history is the practice of interviewing (and, commonly, recording) an individual as they recollect their life or an important historical event. I am asking longtime members of the YM-YWHA and longtime residents of Washington Heights-Inwood to tell me about what it was like in the neighborhood during the 1970s and '80s. Although each interview is different, the common questions that I've posed to each interviewee ask them to describe how the Y managed to provide for the social welfare of northern Manhattan's Jewish community at the same time that they served the needs of the non-Jewish community, particularly the growing population of immigrants from the Dominican Republic. 

These oral histories are valuable to me for a few reasons. Most basically, the more sources you have describing a historical event, the better. Whether they confirm each others' descriptions or contradict one another, a multiplicity of accounts yields insight. Moreover, with the addition of these testimonies my interpretation of historical events becomes less dependent on organizational records from the Y or the Jewish Welfare Board or the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York. It gives me individual perspectives to consider, beyond the view provided in the Y's Board meeting minutes. Finally, it allows me to ask about issues or events that were left out of other records. 

So far, I've spoken with two staff members at the Y and a community activist who participated in this history in the 1970s and '80s (and have continued to contribute up to the present day). In the coming week, I am scheduled to interview two Y Board members who've had similarly lengthy tenures. I hope to continue adding more individuals to my docket in the coming weeks!

Riverdale, Bronx, NY

I must conclude by expressing gratitude to the American Academy of Jewish Research and the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History for making this research possible. 

Ex Post Facto

As I wrote the last section of my first chapter, I discovered that a few of the sources I was relying on to tell the story of the the 1946-47 Jewish Welfare Board Survey (AKA the Janowsky Survey, after its director) were quite tricky to analyze. Because I could not find minutes or records of several important meetings, I had to piece together the proceedings from summaries that were written later--sometimes weeks or months later. How, I wondered, had hindsight colored these descriptions? Could I trust that this was what actually happened?

All historical sources have their challenges. Sometimes it's a problem of omission: the authorship of a document is unclear, or materials are undated, or the subject is ambiguous. Sometimes it's a relational issue: where does this document fit into a broader context or story? Or, why does this document contradict other sources? Then, of course, there's the ever-present challenge of reading between the lines of every document for the silences and assumptions and things left unsaid. Depending on the extent of the issue or the relevance of the document, these challenges can be addressed. Dates and authors can be guessed at using context clues and comparisons to other dated/attributed sources. Ambiguity and contradictions can be mitigated by volume; consult enough sources and a clear picture might eventually emerge. The same could be said for records you suspect were influenced by hindsight--my problem, however, was that I did not have the necessary volume of comparable sources to balance out my interpretation. 

To get specific, this section was about the controversies that erupted after the Survey Director, Dr. Oscar Janowsky, advocated that Centers should be sectarian and that Jewish content should be "primary" in all Center activities. Over several pages, I outlined the various iterations of the Statement of Purpose that the JWB proposed based on Janowsky's survey. I highlighted the changes that were made as a result of opposition by, first, Jewish Center workers (represented by the National Association for Jewish Center Workers, or NAJCW) and, second, by a group of JWB lay leaders who hired Louis Wirth to conduct an "Independent Survey" of Janowsky's Survey in order to critique his emphasis on Jewish content. The changes to the Statement of Purpose were made in a series of meetings in 1947 and 1948, but despite my best efforts I could not find meeting minutes from most of them. Luckily, at the JWB's Annual Meeting in Chicago in 1948 the changes were discussed in great detail--and there was a stenographer who made a transcript of the entire proceeding! I was able to work backwards and determine how the final Statement of Purpose evolved from meeting to meeting. 

Unfortunately, what I lost in this process was any sense of individual agency. I was able to see changes agreed upon by the acting committee, but not who dissented and why. I also had to assume that the rationales for the various changes given at the Annual Meeting were actually the arguments made in those earlier meetings, and not rationales that appeared more palatable in hindsight. That's an important distinction to make when you're examining a controversy!

I also consulted a reflection written by Janowsky in the 1970s. While his memory of the events plugged a lot of holes in my accounting of the events, I struggled to trust his assessments of why things happened the way they did. Not only did I fear that the passage of time might have affected Janowsky's recollections, much of the controversy manifested as personal attacks against his politics and his scholarly authority. He certainly could not be blamed for remembering the events as being much more inflammatory or polarizing than they actually were, or for pinning responsibility on certain individuals that were especially unkind towards him in 1948. 

In the end, I relied on these documents to illuminate process and analyzed correspondence and other contemporary sources (reports, the meeting minutes that I did manage to find, etc.) to come to my own understanding of why certain changes were made. I think I made good choices about what information was "safe" to accept at face value and what was tinted by hindsight or agenda. I found myself really wishing, however, that I had a second reader to give their opinion. Up until this point in my educational journey, I've always read along with others--in courses and seminars, you learn as much from your colleagues' interpretations as from your own. This was the first time that I had to make an assessment all by myself, as the foremost expert on the topic. It's the scholarly version of becoming a grown up. As exciting as it is to be given responsibilities and independence, it takes a while to find your confidence and to stop calling your parents every ten minutes for their advice.  

"M"

When I studied abroad, we heard a lot from our program directors about the "W." Our first month, they told us, we would feel elated and endlessly excited. Studying abroad would be THE GREATEST TIME EVER, Argentina would be THE GREATEST COUNTRY EVER, and our lives would be TOTALLY AWESOME!!! They warned us that this intensity would fade in the second month as homesickness set in. We would eventually recover and recalibrate, and the experience would once again feel exciting and fulfilling (if not quite as AWESOME!!!). Towards the end we would slide back down into homesickness, as the novelty of the adventure fully tarnished and the frustrations of living abroad mounted. In the final month, anticipating our departure, the last round of drinking and sightseeing and travel would buoy our spirits and we would return to the US of A with stories about how studying abroad was absolutely the greatest. Up to down, back to up and down again before one last up.... that's exactly how it went for me. 

Writing the first chapter of my dissertation was the complete inverse. At the beginning I was so unsure of what I was doing, but slowly I got the hang of it and I climbed. I wrote an outline and began working through my argument. I wrote pages and pages of background context (based in secondary literature) about the evolution of synagogues and synagogue-centers, social work and then Jewish social work. I found a rhythm and made progress. It felt totally awesome, if not quite as intensely awesome as those first few weeks of running around a new, foreign city. 

The sensation didn't last. All of that background information became oppressive and I could no longer see the forest for the trees. I had taken the "more is more" approach and now could not really figure out where or how to make it "less." Even armed with my outline, I felt unclear about how to connect the historical context to my own contribution, my analysis of my primary sources. 

I decided to keep writing. I hammered out the details of the past and constructed a narrative to explain how the 1946-47 Jewish Welfare Board Survey affirmed the sectarian commitment (the "Jewish purpose") of the Jewish Community Center. I reinforced the narrative with an incremental series of arguments about how ideological, functional, and communal disagreements between JCC workers, lay leaders, and the rabbinate pushed the Jewish Welfare Board and its constituent Centers to reject the possibility that agencies adopt a policy of nonsectarianism and to instead embrace a positive Jewish function. Once again, writing became fulfilling--I was building something. I believed that I had avoided just writing a laundry list of past events ("first this happened, then that happened, then that happened") and instead had drafted an argument and substantiated it with the historical narrative. 

The bubble burst when, at long last, I finished my draft. As I put it all together, I was so impressed with what I had accomplished. Eighty pages of history! The most I'd ever written! As I began to re-read it, however, all I saw was holes. None of the sections seemed to connect, and arguments appeared and disappeared without pointing towards any ultimate conclusions. I was humbled. I realized that I had made the same mistake as in previous research papers. Instead of incorporating the historical context into my primary analysis and using it to further support my claims, I front-loaded the chapter with thirty chunky, bloated pages of background information. My review of the draft also exposed a steady stream of sentences that provided too much detail, or not enough, or that were laden with assumptions. I filled the margins with comments and turned the pages bright blue. 

By the time I finished confronting and correcting all of the circles and arrows and question marks and strikeouts inflicted on the text, I could not clearly identify the point I was attempting to make in the chapter. It at once addressed everything and nothing. I sent my advisors 76 pages; only one page provided an introduction, and only one page offered concluding thoughts. I was crushed. I'd been so confident, I'd told my advisors to expect a thoughtful, well-crafted draft, and in the end I felt like I had delivered a mess... the very laundry list that I had tried so hard to avoid.

With two weeks of distance and hindsight, I've regained some perspective. While I haven't had the courage to reread the entire draft, I skimmed bits and pieces and it seems just fine. More importantly, I regained sight of the "first-ness" of the endeavor. That I generated 80 pages of coherent English in just a few short months is a remarkable achievement in and of itself, considering that at the outset I had no idea what I was doing. So I'm looking forward to receiving feedback from my advisors. I expect they will have a list of critiques, some of which I identified myself and others that I haven't anticipated. I know that I'm capable of fixing any issues or bolstering any weaknesses that they find, and so I'm ready to learn from their insight and to receive their advice on how to proceed. 

Now that I've stepped off the rollercoaster that was the "M," my hope is that the process of writing chapter two will more closely resemble the study abroad "W." If it's inevitable to have down moments, I'd prefer to begin and end on a high note. 

 

 

Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

On June 15th, I finished and turned in my first dissertation chapter to my advisors (it is both the first chapter of the dissertation and the first chapter I have written). On June 16th, I threw some clothes in a bag and jetted off to South America for a week-long vacation. Here are some lessons learned over the past three weeks:

1. It is very difficult to work on two different projects--the dissertation and the blog--while on a deadline. For the past few months, I would blog before diving into writing my chapter. It was a balance: one hour spent on a blog post, then a few hours dedicated to drafting a section of the chapter. That balance fell away as my deadline approached, not because I was scrambling to catch up but because the chapter became the singular focus of my life for those two weeks. I devoted every moment of mental clarity to evaluating the structure and argument of the chapter, keenly attuned to omissions or unsubstantiated claims. There was no space in my thoughts for a blog post. My mind could not let go of the ideas in the chapter for long enough to focus on another set of ideas. I continued to make blog-worthy observations and I have a long list of posts that I want to draft this week, now that I'm phasing back into a routine dominated by research rather than writing. Stay tuned for those. 

2. Vacation is the best deadline. If you have to set an arbitrary date for completion, apparently it is very effective to set it for the day before you leave for a relaxing trip. I knew that I would not, could not work while touring around a city with my partner and in-laws, and so the work had to get done before leaving. Plus, I looked forward to kicking back and relaxing for a few days! I'm contemplating booking a trip in late August to incentivize myself to complete the second chapter. 

3. I miss blogging when I'm pulled away from it! As fulfilling as it is to convey the thoughts that have been rattling around in my head for months about how events in the past played out, most of my daily writing will only be read by my advisors (who will send it back and have me re-write it many more times before it reaches a wider audience). The immediacy of blogging, in addition to the informality and the more expository nature of the form, make it a most lovely addition to my daily writing output. Many scholars blog to share their research or to extend their academic debates beyond the narrow confines of their discipline and the ivory tower, but I think blogging also appeals to scholarly writers in the way an amuse bouche appeals to fine diners. It's a light beginning to a heavier meal, thoughtful and substantive but informal and, importantly, not meant to distract from the main focus. 

I'm now back in New York, and I have several projects I'm balancing: an article draft, my second dissertation chapter, oral history interviews, and the "ghetto" corpus analysis. Not everything will get done in the five weeks I'm here but I feel invigorated by the city's energy... we shall see how far this momentum takes me!