Event Details - Learning to Document (your) Community's Experience

Oral Histories and Archives

Given recent natural disasters in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, documenting experiences after these troubled times is key for learning from the past, and honoring people, while rebuilding and preparing for the future. (Migration and “resettlement” are issues that Caribbean communities have been dealing with, and continue to, after the economic crisis in Puerto Rico, and the situation after the impact of Hurricane María brings to the surface unimagined issues and challenges worth noting and addressing.) Connecting with community members is pivotal making such a project successful. In this workshop, Prof. Vidal-Ortiz will assist members of the Puerto Rico lab, and any students, faculty, staff, and community members present, in learning about these research processes. He will first illustrate the power of a finished product (in his case, about the book Queer Brown Voices, based on personal narratives of Latina/o LGBT activists whose work happened between the 1970s-1990s), and then how to recruit for a project, the boundaries of design, as well as learning how to conduct oral histories, facilitate the writing of personal narratives, and/or document history through archives (existing ones, or those that seek to ‘put together’ meaning through memory, limited artifacts, and stories). Participants will work on their own idea of a project to document a community or a particular issue.