DB On Oral History

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In the Unit One Discussion Board we talked about the importance of the primary document in studying history. Another great way to study the past is to interview the people who lived it. These interviews can be recorded in a video, audio, or written format. This type of study is referred to as oral history.

One of the great oral historians of the 20th century was a Chicago writer by the name of Studs Terkel. For four decades he interviewed ordinary Americans about their experiences in events like World War Two, the Great Depression and the Civil Rights Movement. He authored some twenty books based on his interviews.

The interviews you will be listening to in this unit are from his 1984 Pulitzer Prize winning book The Good War. Mr. Terkel, who died in 2008, bequeathed his recordings to the Chicago History Museum, and they have been made available online so anyone can listen to them.

Your discussion board assignment for this unit is to listen to two of the first 10 interviews from this page: http://www.studsterkel.org/gwar.php

(Note: you can listen to as many interviews as you want on your own, but for purposes of this assignment just pick from the first ten. It is important to listen to ‘Part Ones’ of the interviews. They will explain who is being interviewed. Most of the interviews are between 15 to 17 minutes in length.)

For this discussion board:

Listen to two interviews and discuss the following:

1. Tell us who is being interviewed and what topics are discussed in each of them.

2. What topics stood out to you in the interview? Explain why they stood out to you.

3. What do you think were some particularly good questions that Mr. Terkel asked?

4. What is a question that you would have asked that Mr. Terkel did not ask of the interview subject?

5. What do you understand better now, after listening to the interview, than you did before you heard it?