Beyond the Transcript: Oral History as Pedagogy

Abstract

When I recorded my first interview, I was a graduate student in American Folk Cultures in the Cooperstown Graduate Program. I interviewed Lithuanian Americans in Amsterdam, New York, about traditions surrounding food and celebration. The following year, in February, at the northern tip of Wisconsin’s Bayfield peninsula, I interviewed Finnish Americans about everyday life for Old World Wisconsin, the then-new outdoor museum that brought together buildings representing the many ethnic groups living in rural Wisconsin. I drove along roads buried deep in snow to snug log houses with wood-burning stoves where I was greeted with thick black coffee, rye bread, pickled sardines, fruit soup, other local foods, and stories.