Oral History

Project description
Max Brooks wrote an oral history of a fictional event. He created multiple characters/voices to recount their experiences during the war against zombies. In fact, Brooks modeled his novel after Studs Terkel’s nonfiction oral history of World War II The Good War. Indeed, readers don’t get too attached to the characters/people because there’s little character development, but that’s the nature of the genre. Instead, the reader gains multiple perspectives of this shared experience.

What I ask is that you develop an oral history based on a real event and share real people’s voices/perspectives. Consider major events from your lifetime that touched more than just you, more than just your family or group of friends. In other words, consider an event of the past that made the news. Perhaps it was a sporting event, a natural disaster, a war, a death, and election.

Then develop a mini-oral history. Rather than personal interviews, however, you will find, evaluate, and use at least eight sources of a good variety to reveal multiple voices and experiences. Consider books (print or electronic), newspaper articles (online or print), magazine articles (online or print), journal articles (online or print), films/documentary (dvd or online), published interviews (audio or print), personal interviews (face to face, phone, or email). All sources must be relevant and credible.

You’ll compose the oral history using PowerPoint. Just as Terkel and Brooks introduced their books, you will also need an introduction. In addition, you’ll need to consider how to organize the voices/characters for an engaging and logical plan, and with whom to end since there will not be an actual conclusion. You’ll quote/paraphrase/summarize from the researched sources, and you’ll need to follow MLA documentation rules intext, as well as on a works cited page, which will be built using Microsoft Word and attached separately.

Understand that you are not creating a PowerPoint for a presentation; instead, the PowerPoint should stand on its own without explanation. It should feel more like a short film (not so short, however, that there’s no chance for the reader to absorb the development). It should also be visually appealing; therefore, you’ll need to incorporate multiple relevant images, and you should consider font and background styles.