Subject one
Field collecting
How to plan, conduct and document an oral history interview, from first contact and consent through recording, notes and archiving. Equipment, etiquette and ethics are all covered.
Education
Courses
Multi session courses that teach the methods of oral history and the cultural history they serve.
Course subjects
What the Institute teaches
Courses are built around a small number of recurring subjects. Each can be adapted to the interests of the group taking it, and each ends with something useful in hand, whether a finished interview, a set of field notes or a piece of research.
Subject two
The history and culture of Italians in California
The migration story of Italian communities in the state, the institutions they built, and the regional cultures they carried with them from many different parts of Italy.
Subject three
Food in Italian culture
How food carries memory, region and faith, and how a recipe or a festival meal can be read as a historical document.
Subject four
Folk and regional culture
Song, dance, narrative and custom as living traditions, with attention to the regional differences that make a single national label misleading.
A course in practice
The Institute's public course Collecting and Connecting is a good example of how these subjects combine. Over four sessions it introduced oral history, field methods and the Italian resources of Los Angeles, and it sent students out to contribute their own research to the archive.
Bringing a course to your group
Courses can be arranged for universities, schools, cultural associations and community organisations. To discuss a subject, a length and a location, please contact the Institute.