Dr. Martha Norkunas

Professor

Dr. Martha Norkunas
615-494-7701
Room 266, Peck Hall (PH)
MTSU Box 23, Murfreesboro, TN 37132

Degree Information

  • PHD, Indiana University (1990)
  • MA, Aix-Marseille Universite (1982)
  • BA, Brandeis University (1978)

Areas of Expertise

Oral History; Public History; Folklore; Cultural Memory; Race, Gender, and Space; Commemorative Landscapes; Cultural Geography; Labor History

Biography

Martha Norkunas is Professor of Oral and Public History in the Public History Program at Middle Tennessee State University. She holds a Ph.D. in Folklore from Indiana University’s Folklore Institute. She is the author of The Politics of Public Memory: Tourism, History and Ethnicity in Monterey, California and Monuments and Memory: History and Representation in Lowell, Massachusetts as well as various articles in national and international journals. He...

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Martha Norkunas is Professor of Oral and Public History in the Public History Program at Middle Tennessee State University. She holds a Ph.D. in Folklore from Indiana University’s Folklore Institute. She is the author of The Politics of Public Memory: Tourism, History and Ethnicity in Monterey, California and Monuments and Memory: History and Representation in Lowell, Massachusetts as well as various articles in national and international journals. Her current book project is an examination of nuanced listening in interpersonal dialogue. Norkunas’s work examines how cultural memory is represented in narrative and on the landscape, and how those representations intersect with race, gender, class and power. From 1999-2009 Norkunas directed the Project in Interpreting the Texas Past at the University of Texas at Austin where she taught interdisciplinary teams of graduate students to think critically about memory, history, and culture and to create more diverse and inclusive interpretations at Texas historic sites. After joining the History Department at MTSU in 2009 Norkunas created a concentration in Oral History and directs a variety of oral history projects, including the African American Oral History Project. She teaches graduate seminars in community engaged public history, working with diverse partner organizations around the state. Norkunas has lectured in the United States and internationally and is the recipient of fellowships and grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Houston Endowment, and other state and regional foundations. In 2018 she received the Oral History Association Postsecondary Teaching Award, a national teaching award granted to a distinguished postsecondary educator.  She is a former board member of the National Council on Public History, served on the board of the International Oral History Association from 2016-2021, and is currently Vice President of the IOHA.

 

 

 

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Publications

Selected Publications

Books

Monuments and Memory, History and Representation in Lowell, Massachusetts. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2002; Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2006. Honorable Mention Eli Kongas-Maranda Prize of the Women's Folklore Section, American Folklore Society, 2003. 

Work, Recreation, and Culture: Selected Essays in United States Labor History. Editor (with ...

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Selected Publications

Books

Monuments and Memory, History and Representation in Lowell, Massachusetts. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2002; Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2006. Honorable Mention Eli Kongas-Maranda Prize of the Women's Folklore Section, American Folklore Society, 2003. 

Work, Recreation, and Culture: Selected Essays in United States Labor History. Editor (with Martin Blatt). New York: Garland Press, 1996.

The Politics of Public Memory: Tourism, History and Ethnicity in Monterey California. Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 1993. Historic Preservation Book Award, Mary Washington College, Center for Historic Preservation, 1994.

Book Chapters

“The Vulnerable Listener,” in Off the Record, Towards an Ethnography of Practice, Anna Sheftel and Stacey Zembrzycki, eds., Palgrave Studies in Oral History, Palgrave McMillan, 2013, pp. 81-96. Book awarded the Oral History Association 2014 Book Prize.

“The Ethnic Enclave as Cultural Space: Women’s Oral Histories of Life and Work in Lowell,” in The Continuing Revolution, Robert Weible, ed., Lowell, Massachusetts: The Lowell Historical Society, pp. 323-339.

Articles

“Introduction: Experiencing the More-than-Human World,” Martha Norkunas, Michaela Fenske (eds), Narrative Culture, vol 4, no. 2 (2017): 105-110. 

"Are Trees Spiritual? Do Trees Have Souls? Narratives about Human-Tree Relationships," Martha Norkunas, Michaela Fenske (eds), Narrative Culture, vol 4, no. 2 (2017): 169-184.

“Narrating the Racialization of Space in Austin, Texas and Nashville, Tennessee,” Colloquia Humanistica, Neighborhood as a Cultural and Social Problem Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, no. 4 (2015): 11-25. https://ispan.waw.pl/journals/index.php/ch/index 

“Teaching to Listen: Listening Exercises and Self-Reflexive Journals,” Oral History Review v. 38, no. 1 (Winter-Spring 2011): 73-108.

"Narratives of Resistance and the Consequences of Resistance," Journal of Folklore Research, v. 41, nos.2-3 (May-December 2004): 105-123.

“Women, Work and Ethnic Identity: Personal Narratives and the Ethnic Enclave in the Textile City of Lowell, Massachusetts,” The Journal of Ethnic Studies, v. 15, no. 3 (Fall 1987): 27-48.

Chapters in Books

“The Vulnerable Listener,” in Off the Record, Towards an Ethnography of Practice, Anna Sheftel and Stacey Zembrzycki, eds., Palgrave Studies in Oral History, Palgrave McMillan, 2013, pp. 81-96. Book awarded the Oral History Association 2014 Book Prize.

“The Ethnic Enclave as Cultural Space: Women’s Oral Histories of Life and Work in Lowell,” in The Continuing Revolution, Robert Weible, ed., Lowell, Massachusetts: The Lowell Historical Society, (2004): 323-339.

Book Reviews and Review Essays

“Landmarks of American Women’s History,” The Public Historian v.27, no. 1 (Winter, 2005): 71-73.

“Shaping the Past, Review essay of Monuments to the Lost Cause, Restoring Women’s History Through Historic Preservation, and Naked Barbies, Warrior Joes, & Other Forms of Visible Gender” The Women’s Review of Books., v. XXI, no. 12 (September 2004): 23-4.

“The Object of Memory: Arab and Jew Narrate the Palestinian Village,” The Journal of American Folklore v. 113, no. 449 (Summer, 2000), pp. 331-333.

“Carried to the Wall:  American Memory and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial,” The Public Historian v. 21, no. 2 (Spring, 1999), pp. 127-129.

“The New History in an Old Museum:  Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg,” The Journal of American Folklore. v. 112, no. 444 (Spring, 1999), pp. 215-217.

“Somalia in Word and Image,” (book review) Folklore Forum.  v. 19, no. 2.

Newsletters, Brochures, Magazines, Published Talks and Online Articles

Black Lives Matter Statement, History Department, Middle Tennessee State University. Authored department statement for all social media, Spring 2020.     

“Her Freedom to go Anywhere,” IOHA Plenary Talk Bangalore, 2016, published in Words and Silences, Journal of the International Oral History Association, September 2019.

“Military Monuments and North Carolina,” in Remembrance, Tar Heel Junior Historian Association Magazine, Fitz Brundage, ed. Raleigh, North Carolina: North Carolina Museum of History, (Fall 2014) pp. 4-5.

“Revisiting Monterey 20 Years After ‘The Politics of Public Memory,’” History at Work, A Public History Commons for the National Council on Public History, posted January 14, 2014, https://ncph.org/history-at-work/revisiting-monterey/

“Thinking about Climate Change as Public Historians,” Public History News, National Council on Public History, 2008, v. 28, no. 4. (with Cathy Stanton).

“Report from the Field: The Partnership in Interpreting the Texas Past,” Public History News, National Council on Public History, 2000, v. 20, no. 2.

The Lowell Monuments (brochure). The Lowell Historical Society, Lowell, Massachusetts, 1997.

“Reconstructing the Past: A Prism Through Which We See,” Tallahassee Democrat, March 23, 1995 Op Ed Section, p. 15A, Tallahassee, Florida (invited).

“Oral History: Recording the Words of the Past,” The Local.  April/May, Lowell, Massachusetts, 1992.

He Has To Be a Learned Man”: Workers’ Culture at the Heywood-Wakefield Company, 1935-1979 (brochure), 1990.  South Hadley, Massachusetts: The Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities.

“Food, Culture and the Grocery Store,” The Local.  Sept/Oct, Lowell, Massachusetts (with Yildiray Erdener) 1989.

Heywood-Wakefield Remembered. Editor and author of monthly newsletter for former employees of Heywood-Wakefield, 1988-1989.

“Everyone Likes His Praises Sung,” Folklore Forum.  v. 18, no. 1 (1985): 6-14.  Translated from Hausa (with Frank Wright).

Co-editor (with Regina Bendix), Folklore Forum, International Folklore Publication, published by the graduate students at the Indiana University Folklore Institute, 1984-1985.

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Presentations

Presentations

2021             Chair and presenter, A Life of Listening, International Oral History Association Conference, via zoom (prerecorded video with Indira Chowdhury of the Srishti Manipal Institute, Bangalore).  

2020             Keynote, “Trauma and Memory,” Wabash College, Crawsfordsville, IN.  

2019   &...

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Presentations

2021             Chair and presenter, A Life of Listening, International Oral History Association Conference, via zoom (prerecorded video with Indira Chowdhury of the Srishti Manipal Institute, Bangalore).  

2020             Keynote, “Trauma and Memory,” Wabash College, Crawsfordsville, IN.  

2019             Presenter, “Mapping Memories of Migration,” Gendered Pasts in Europe and the Americas panel, Memory Studies Association Conference, Madrid, Spain.  

2019             Chair and presenter, special double panel on A Life of Listening, “A Life of Listening to Stories of Struggle and Meaning,” Oral History Association, Salt Lake City, Utah.        

2018             Featured Speaker, “Mutable Pasts,” Belmont University Humanities Symposium The Present and the Future of the Past; and panelist, “Memory and Narrative.” 

2018             “Uneasy Listening, or When Trauma Changes the Present, it Changes the Past,” Particularities of Interviewing Traumatized People, International Oral History Pre-Conference Workshop, Jyväskylä, Finland.  

2018             Chair and presenter, “Ideas about Listening in the Life History Interview,” Interviews and Methods Panel, International Oral History Conference, Jyväskylä, Finland.  

2017             Invited speaker, Winter Oral History School, Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore, India. Presented public lecture, “Narratives, Resistance and the Shifting Geographies of Power,” and talk on panel, “Memory and the Art of Interviewing.”  

2017             Panel Member, “Audiences Embody Racialized and Gendered Geographies,” Imagining the Audience, Oral History Association, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

2017             Presenter, “Bounded Worlds of Glass: Concepts of Home in Systems of Racial Exclusion,” Walls of Glass: Visibility and Transparence in Materiality and Metaphor, International Society for Ethnology and Folklore, Göttingen, Germany.  

2016             Panel Member, “The Narrative Life of Trees,” Experiencing the Other-Than-Human World Panel, American Folklore Society/ International Society for Folk Narrative Research Joint Conference, Miami, Florida.  

2016             Invited Closing Plenary Panel Speaker, “Oral History and the Movement of Gendered and Racialized Bodies,” The Dialogue between Oral History and History: Convergences and Divergences, International Oral History Association Conference, Bangalore, India.  

2016             Panelist, “Interpreting the Gender of Racialized Space,” International Oral History Association Conference, Bangalore, India.  

2016             Invited Keynote, “The Complex Terrain of Racialized Space: Nuances, Ambiguities and the Social Construction of Power,” Burnham-Macmillan 2015-2016 Lecture Series--Memorials: Origins and Transformations, History Department, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan.  

2015             Presenter, “An Urban Ethnography of Power Relations and the Racialization of Space,” Ethnographies of Urban Public Spaces Panel, Utopias, Realities, Heritages: Ethnographies for the 21st Century, International Society for Ethnology and Folklore, Zagreb, Croatia.  

2015             Participant and organizer, “Grassroots Public History Activism: Adding the Names of Black Union Soldiers to the War Monument in an Old Southern Town,” National Council on Public History, Nashville, Tennessee.  

2014             Chair, “The Memory of Identity: Co-creating Narratives of Self-discovery in Movement,” Oral History Association, Madison, Wisconsin.  

2013             Roundtable Participant, “So, What Does Building Trust Mean, Anyway? Sharing our Interview Stories and Reflecting on the Craft of Oral History,” Oral History Association, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.  

2013             Chair, “Hidden Stories as Subversive History,” Oral History Association, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.  

2013             Invited Speaker, “Teaching to Listen: Approaches to Oral History,” Colloquium for the Institut für Kulturanthropologie/Europäische Ethnologie, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.  

2013             Panel Member and Panel Chair, “In the Presence of Violence and Deception: Witnessing Narratives of Survival,” International Society for Folk Narrative Research, Vilnius, Lithuania.   

2013             Speed Networking Mentor, National Council on Public History, Ottawa, Canada.  

2012             Panel Member, “The Vulnerable Listener,” Off the Record: Unspoken Negotiations in the Practice of Oral History, Oral History Association, Cleveland, Ohio.  

2012             Participant, “Capitalism and the Environment,” NCPH Working Group on Museums and Sustainability,” National Council on Public History, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

2011             Panel Member, “Strategies for Teaching Nuanced Listening to Oral History Students,” Oral History in the 21st Century Classroom, Oral History Association, Denver, Colorado.  

2011             Invited Participant, “The Vulnerable Listener,” Off the Record: Unspoken Negotiations in the Practice of Oral History, Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada.  

2011             Panel Member, “Comments, Commemorating the 9-11 Anniversary: Ten Years Later,” National Council on Public History, Pensacola, Florida.  

2011             Radio interview, “Documenting Diversity on Campus,” Middle Tennessee State University, On the Record, January 9, 2011, with graduate students in my seminar, Research in American History: Landscape, Ethnography, the Image and the Artifact (Researching Nonstandard Sources). Podcast at: http://www.mtsu.edu/news/podcast/2011/OTR_1-9-11.mp3  

2010             Panel Member, “Racial Consciousness: Narrating Awareness,” Oral History Association, Atlanta, Georgia.  

2010             Panel Member, ““Racial Consciousness and the Reconstructed Self: Ethical Implications,” American Folklore Society Meeting, Nashville, Tennessee.  

2010             Invited radio interview, “Oral History,” Middle Tennessee State University, On the Record, May 2, 2010. Podcast at: http://www.mtsu.edu/news/podcast/2010/OTR_05-02-10.mp3 or  http://www.mtsu.edu/news/podcast/podcast2010.shtml  

2009             Keynote, “Listening Across Differences,” Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies and the Smithsonian Heritage Months Steering Committee, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.  Live webcast at http://museumstudies.si.edu/ or Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKbTMta6Ku8  

2009             Panel Member, “Development of Racial Consciousness in the African American Texans Oral History Narratives,” National Council on Public History Meetings, Providence, Rhode Island.  

2008             “The Oral Narratives of African American Texans,” Guest Lecture for UT Quest, University of Texas at Austin Third Age University.  

2008             Chair, “Race, Ethnicity, Ethics and Identity: An Audience Involved Discussion of Interviewing Across Difference,” Oral History Association Conference, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (special double panel).  

2008             Co-Chair/ Facilitator, “What Does Climate Change Have to do with Your Museum?” National Council on Public History Conference, Louisville, Kentucky.  

2008             Keynote, “The Ragged Landscapes of Memory:  Melancholia and the Sublime,” The Stephen Crane Memorial Lecture, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York.  

2008             Workshop Leader, “Race, Class, Gender and the Commitment to Civic Engagement:  A Workshop on Scholarship in Action,” Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York.  

2007             Panel Member, “Remembering Erased Pasts,” Activating Audiences Through Research and Remembering Panel, National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture, Austin, Texas.  

2007             Invited Plenary Speaker Panel, National Council on Public History Conference, Santa Fe, New Mexico.  

2007             Panel Member, “Work, Globalization and Human Rights,” Industrial Heritage, National Council on Public History Conference, Santa Fe, New Mexico.  

2007             Keynote, “Power, Resistance and Monuments,” Memory and Monuments Conference, University of Texas El Paso.  

2006             “The Weight of the Past,” American Folklore Society Meetings, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  

2005             Invited Speaker, “The Coin Drops: Memory Fragments,” Feminist and Activist Ethnography Seminar, Department of Performance Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.  

2005             “Professional Issues for Public Historians,” and “Gendered Monuments,” Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Claremont, California.  

2005             Chair, “A Diversity of Voices: African Americans Recount Austin’s Past,” Texas Historical Commission Annual Preservation Conference, Austin, Texas.  

2004             Invited Participant, Diversity Advisory Committee Meeting, Texas Historical Commission, Austin, Texas.  

2004             Invited Participant, Interpreting Women’s History for the Public Roundtable, The Southwest Institute for Research on Women (SIROW), Tucson, Arizona.  

2004             Commentator, “The National Park Service and Texas History and Landscapes,” Texas State Historical Association Annual Meeting, Austin, Texas.  

2004             “Sites of Meaning, Sites of Memory,” Odyssey Enrichment Classes, University of Texas Continuing and Extended Education, 2004 Humanities Lecture Series.  

2003             “Why Folk Culture is Important,” Invited Presentation, Texas Historical Commission, Austin, Texas.  

2003             Keynote, “The Politics of Cultural Representation,” Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.  

2003             Invited Speaker, “Memory, History, Power,” Mellon Foundation Workshops, Humanities Center, Stanford University, Stanford, California.  

2002             “The Austin Women’s Commemorative Project: Reimagining Austin on the Web,” University of Texas San Antonio Women’s History Week, San Antonio, Texas.  

2002             “Imagining Monuments to Women,” University of Texas at Austin, Women’s Studies Community Circle, Austin, Texas.  

2000             “Why Are There No Monuments to Women?” Women, Leadership and Policy Series, The Center for Women’s Studies, University of Texas, Austin, Texas.  

1998             "The Social Creation of Memory," National Council on Public History, Austin, Texas.  

1997             "My Lieux de Mémoire: Where the Personal Meets the Collective," American Folklore Society, Austin, Texas.  

1997             Keynote, "Whose Heritage?" and consultation on heritage development, Regional Heritage, Regional Development: Strategies for Synergy, Buffalo, New York.  

1996             "Sites of Memory," paper presented for the Series in Expressive Culture, Center for Intercultural Studies in Folklore and Ethnomusicology, The University of Texas at Austin.  

1996             Chair, "Sculpting Women's History," National Council on Public History, Seattle, Washington.  

1995             Invited Speaker, “Lessons from the Politics of Public Memory: Monuments, Stories, and Enola Gay,” Mary Washington College Center for Historic Preservation.  

1995             Commentator, "Landscape as Political History," American Folklore Society Meeting, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  

1994             Keynote, “Heritage Production” Interpreting Pennsylvania’s Industrial Heritage, Easton, Pennsylvania.  Sponsored by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and the National Endowment for the Humanities.  

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Awards

2018             Oral History Association Postsecondary Teaching Award awarded to distinguished postsecondary educator involved in undergraduate, graduate, continuing, or professional education who has incorporated the practice of oral history in the classroom in an exemplary way. Awarded biannually.  

2016             Middle Tennessee State University Sabbatica...

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2018             Oral History Association Postsecondary Teaching Award awarded to distinguished postsecondary educator involved in undergraduate, graduate, continuing, or professional education who has incorporated the practice of oral history in the classroom in an exemplary way. Awarded biannually.  

2016             Middle Tennessee State University Sabbatical Award (NIA).  

2011             Faculty Research and Creative Award (FRCAC), Middle Tennessee State University Research Grant.  

2011             Texas House of Representatives Resolution 196 Honoring the Intellectual Entrepreneurship Consortium, including the Project in Interpreting the Texas Past, for “its innovative leadership in the realm of higher education.”  http://communication.utexas.edu/ie/texas-house-resolution-honoring-uts-intellectual-entrepreneurship-consortium-0  

2010             Access and Diversity Grant, Middle Tennessee State University Research Grant.  

2008             University of Texas at Austin Orange Jackets, Week of Women, selected as inspirational female professor.  

1999-2004    Texas Parks and Wildlife for the Project in Interpreting the Texas Past.  

2003             Honorable Mention, Elli Köngäs-Maranda Prize for Monuments and Memory. Awarded by the Women’s Folklore Section, American Folklore Society, for outstanding work on women’s traditional, vernacular, and local culture and/or work on feminist theory and folklore.  

2003             Academic Innovation Award, the RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, Austin, Texas.  

2002             The Houston Endowment award for the Project in Interpreting the Texas Past.  

2002             The Summerlee Foundation Grant for the Project in Interpreting the Texas Past.  

2001-2002    University of Texas Center for Instructional Technologies FAST Tex 2002 Awards for film and web production: Oral History, Engaging Audiences Through New Media.  

2001             National Endowment for the Humanities Consultation Grants Award for the Austin Women’s Commemorative Project.  

2001             University of Texas, Services for Students with Disabilities Appreciation Award.  

2000             The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation Innovation Award for the Austin Women’s Commemorative Project.  

1996             American Council of Learned Societies Postdoctoral Fellowship for research and writing Monuments and Memory.  

1996             Theodore Edson Parker Foundation Award and The L.J. Skaggs and Mary C. Skaggs Foundation Award for the Lowell Monuments Project.  

1994             The 1994 Historic Preservation Book Award for The Politics of Public Memory. Awarded by Mary Washington College, Center for Historic Preservation, Fredericksburg, Virginia for having made the most significant contribution to the historic preservation movement in the United States in 1994.  

1993             National Trust for Historic Preservation for the Lowell Monuments Project.  

1990             American Association for State and Local History Certificate of Commendation for the “Shifting Gears” research project.  

1989             Massachusetts Foundation for Humanities Award for exhibit at the Gardner Heritage State Park and the Gardner Museum “Heywood-Wakefield Remembered,” for the Shifting Gears project.  

1985             The 1985 Outstanding Folklore Student Award, Indiana University.  

1983-1984    The Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities and the Parker Foundation to produce a documentary about women in Lowell, Massachusetts textile mills “‘And that’s how we did in the mill’: Women in the Lowell Textile Mills.” Chosen as “Best Bet” by the Boston Globe, aired on WBGH television 1984, honorable mention New England Film and Video Contest, most requested film/video at the Lowell National Historical Park 1984-1990.

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Research / Scholarly Activity

Work in Progress

I am working on two book projects. The first is a book about teaching oral history, focusing on the listening exercises I developed to teach students to listen in sensitive, nuanced ways.

The second manuscript is an examination of how the meaning of work has changed at two pivitol points in American history: during deindustrialization, and in the new deindustrialization as robotics replaces human labor.

Creative Activity

Selected Oral History Projects

Recent Oral History Memoirs: Mary Winton Green (2017), John Kline (2015).

Recent Oral History Interviews: Texas Women's Historians, Contemporary Women's Lives.

Director of Recent Graduate Student Oral History Project: Nashville Task Force for Refugees and Immigrants Oral History Project (2018), Progressive Tennessee Activists Oral History Project (2017).

Director, African American Oral History Project, 2004-the pr...

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Selected Oral History Projects

Recent Oral History Memoirs: Mary Winton Green (2017), John Kline (2015).

Recent Oral History Interviews: Texas Women's Historians, Contemporary Women's Lives.

Director of Recent Graduate Student Oral History Project: Nashville Task Force for Refugees and Immigrants Oral History Project (2018), Progressive Tennessee Activists Oral History Project (2017).

Director, African American Oral History Project, 2004-the present. Project focuses on African American life histories in Texas and Tennessee in an effort to come to a deeper understanding of the important events, values, and intellectual perspectives in the lives of African Americans, and to examine the importance of race and racial identity in America. 200 life history interviews completed. Accepted for deposit at the Library of Congress.

Student Debt Oral History Project, 2015-present, oral histories on the effect of student loans on individual lives.

Listening Across Difference Oral History Project (with Ann Graham), 2009. Oral history project for different faculties in the Austin Independent School District to build trust between teachers from difference races, genders, and backgrounds.

Director, Oral History, Identity and Diversity, 2007-2008.  Directed undergraduate honors students in conducting oral history interviews with University of Texas students about their racial and ethnic identities. Archive includes fifty-five interviews  120 hours of audio.

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In the Media

DIGITAL MEDIA—Films, Podcasts, Webinars

2021             Creator and Host, Webinar Series, Diverse Histories for a Diverse Nation, series of two webinars with public intellectuals discussing interpreting diverse histories. Broadcast via MTSU, supported by Strickland Distinguished Scholars Fund. Webinar 1: Dr. Maria Franklin, Dr. Nedra Lee, Dr. Kendra Field, race, indigeneity, silencing racializ...

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DIGITAL MEDIA—Films, Podcasts, Webinars

2021             Creator and Host, Webinar Series, Diverse Histories for a Diverse Nation, series of two webinars with public intellectuals discussing interpreting diverse histories. Broadcast via MTSU, supported by Strickland Distinguished Scholars Fund. Webinar 1: Dr. Maria Franklin, Dr. Nedra Lee, Dr. Kendra Field, race, indigeneity, silencing racialized pasts, public archaeology, memory and fragments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5sjw41wT-w&ab_channel=Historymemoryculture.org                      Webinar 2: Dr. Dwight Pitcaithley, Mr. Rolf Diamant, Mr. Bill Gwaltney, co-host Dr. Nedra Lee, interpreting diverse histories at the National Park Service. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hLFvoanQt0&ab_channel=Historymemoryculture.org  (Dr. Brad Wright question moderator)                                    

2019             Producer, “The Making of Muna Muday,” 12 minutes biographical portrait of Muna Muday, a Nashville resident, Vanderbilt graduate student and refugee from Somalia, with Paul Wagner and graduate students in Advanced Project in Public History Maymester seminar. Folkstreams: https://www.folkstreams.net/film-detail.php?id=455  

2007             “A Monument is Apart from Ordinary Space and Time,” Podcast for the exhibition, America Starts Here: Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler, The Austin Museum of Art, Austin, Texas.  

1984, 2010   Producer and director: “‘And that’s how we did in the mill’: Women in the Lowell Textile Mills.” (Color, 3/4”, 30 min.).  Lowell women talk about immigration, ethnic communities, and textile mills.  Received Honorable Mention 1984 New England Film and Video Contest; aired on WGBH Boston 9/84; WTIU Indiana 5/85; part of the Lowell National Historical Park’s Outreach Program. Re-edited and digitized 2010. Available on youtube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFX273CZsII  

2008             Editor and Producer, “Penn Farm, Cedar Hill.” 15 minute introductory digital video about diverse communities in Cedar Hill, Texas.  

 

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Special Projects

Evaluator, National Endowment for the Humanities, Digital Projects for the Public panel, 2018.

Evaluator, National Endowment for the Humanities, Public Programs Panel, 2015.

Courses

Seminar in Public History (graduate seminar); Oral History: Theory and Methodology (graduate seminar); Oral History Fieldwork (graduate seminar); The History of Slavery in Rutherford County, TN (graduate seminar); Advanced Projects in Public History: Interpreting and Representing Oral History (graduate seminar); Professional Residency Colloquium (graduate seminar); Current Issues in Public History Practice Maymester (graduate film seminar); Seminar in Public Programming for Historical Organiz...

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Seminar in Public History (graduate seminar); Oral History: Theory and Methodology (graduate seminar); Oral History Fieldwork (graduate seminar); The History of Slavery in Rutherford County, TN (graduate seminar); Advanced Projects in Public History: Interpreting and Representing Oral History (graduate seminar); Professional Residency Colloquium (graduate seminar); Current Issues in Public History Practice Maymester (graduate film seminar); Seminar in Public Programming for Historical Organizations and Archives (graduate seminar); Research in American History: Analyzing Nonstandard Sources (graduate seminar),MTSU Field Schools, direct Public History Graduate Internship Program. Include community partnerships, civic engagement in graduate seminars.

Panels for the Oral History Association conference with MTSU graduate students and faculty members (2010, 2013, 2014); panels for graduate students at the National Council for Public History (2014) and with community partners (2014); exhibit and panel with graduate students at the American Folklore Society (2018); Online Public History projects for the African American Heritage Society of Maury County Tennessee, Bradley Academy, Murfreesboro African American museum, public history project with diverse communities in Nashville.

American History 1865-present (undergraduate), Work, Globalization and Human Rights (undergraduate), Oral History, Identity and Diversity (undergraduate), Introduction to Cross Cultural Experiences (undergraduate). 

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