Teaching to Listen: Listening Exercises and Self-Reflexive Journals

Abstract

Listening is critical to the oral history process. How does one teach students to listen? This article describes a series of listening exercises the author designed for her students and the reflexive journals they kept to record their responses to the exercises. One of the motivations for the deepening of listening skills was to assist students in becoming more sensitive to issues involved in listening to someone who was different from them in significant ways. While many of the students’ responses centered around increasing their perceptions of listening in general, some commented specifically on what it means to listen to someone who is racially different from the listener. Students wrote about listening as a very active process that deeply impacts the content, performance, and emotional tone of the narration. They acknowledged the significance of nonverbal affirmations, directed questions, unstructured environments, empathetic bonding with narrators, and the role of silence in listening. They also commented on the impact that power negotiations had on the interview, and how honesty, openness, and self-revelation eased discomfort in talking about racial issues. Many commented on the lack of intensive listening they engaged in during their ordinary lives, and sought to incorporate their new listening skills not only in oral history interviews, but in their personal interactions with family and friends.

• interviewing techniques, listening
• oral history methodology
• race
• reflexivity

Notes

1 I would like to thank a number of my colleagues for sharing their ideas with me on the topic of nuanced listening and for their comments on various drafts of this paper. They include Yildiray Erdener, Jasmine Erdener, Dana Everts-Boehm, Alan Boehm, Martha Harroun Foster, Yuan-ling Chao, Chris McCusker, and Mary Hoffschwelle. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Thanks to my graduate and undergraduate students for allowing me to quote from their listening journals. Versions of this paper were presented at The University of Texas at Austin and at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum.

2 Michael Frisch, A Shared Authority (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), xx, 71.

3 Alessandro Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), ix, xi. While chapter two, “Research as an Experiment in Equality,” treats the relational aspect of the interview explicitly, throughout the book Portelli reflects on the interviewer-narrator relationship.

4 Ronald J. Grele, “Values and Methods in the Classroom, Transformation of Oral History,” Oral History Review 25, nos 1–2 (Summer to Fall 1998): 57–69. See also Grele's article, “Oral History as Evidence,” in Handbook of Oral History, ed. Thomas L. Charlton, Lois E. Myers, and Rebecca Sharpless (Lanham, MD: Altamira Press, 2006), 43–101.

5 Kathryn Anderson and Dana Jack, for example, encouraged listeners to ask women to reflect upon the meaning of their experience, to listen to the women's moral language, their meta-statements, and to the logic of their narratives. They note that a woman's discussion of her life may combine two conflicting paradigms: one framed by men's dominant position in the culture, and one informed by more immediate realities of her personal experience. See Kathryn Anderson and Dana Jack, “Learning to Listen: Interview Techniques and Analysis,” in Women's Words, the Feminist Practice of Oral History, ed. Sherna Berger Gluck and Daphne Patai (New York: Routledge, 1991). Kristina Minister wrote that men's forms of communication are assumed to be the norm for oral history interviewing and that deviating from that model is subnormal. Some of the differences she noted were that men talk about what they do but women talk about who they are; men are willing to “take the floor” and engage in monologic, well-polished narratives, while women tend to a more dialogic, slower paced approach, and that women respond well to reinforcements in the narrative that men may perceive as interruptions. See Kristina Minister, “A Feminist Frame for the Oral History Interview,” in Women's Words, the Feminist Practice of Oral History, ed. Sherna Berger Gluck and Daphne Patai (New York: Routledge, 1991).

6 The Difficult Dialogues project was launched by the Ford Foundation to, among other goals, “prepare students to constructively engage with difficult and sensitive topics.” For more information see: http://www.difficultdialogues.org/about/ (accessed September 4, 2010).

7 Della Pollock, “Introduction: Remembering,” in Remembering, Oral History as Performance, ed. Della Pollock (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), 2–3.

8 The students also came from a wide range of disciplines on campus: Performance as Public Practice, History, American Studies, English, Communications, Library and Information Sciences, Anthropology, the Michener Center for Writers, the Historic Preservation Program, the Design Program, the Theater Department, and even the School of Nursing.

9 This approach proved very fruitful, and avoided some of the challenges noted by Catherine Fosl and Tracy E. K'Meyer in Freedom on the Border, An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2009) when The Kentucky Civil Rights Oral History Project engaged in interviews with African Americans in Kentucky. Interviewers were to focus on a specific date range—1954–1968—and people who were clearly identified with the civil rights movement. By opening up the interview to the narrator's life experiences, we found that many people who said they were not active in the civil rights movement because they did not attend demonstrations or sit-ins, were intellectually very engaged, and participated in the movement “emotionally” or in other small but significant ways.

10 Among the other oral history texts in the seminar, the class read a number of oral histories about African-American life including Bernadette Anand et al., Keeping the Struggle Alive: Studying Desegregation in Our Town, A Guide to Doing Oral History (New York: Teachers College Press, 2002); Raymond Arsenault, Freedom Riders, 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell about Life in the Segregated South, ed. William H. Chafe, Raymond Gavins, and Robert Korstad (New York: New Press, 2001); History and Memory in African American Culture, ed. Genevieve Fabre and Robert O'Meally (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Catherine Fosl, Subversive Southerner, Anne Braden and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Cold War South (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002); Fosl and K'Meyer, Freedom on the Border; Henry Hampton and Steve Fayer, Voices of Freedom, An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s through the 1980s (New York: Bantam Books, 1991); Michael Keith Honey, Black Workers Remember: An Oral History of Segregation, Unionism, and the Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Howell Raines, My Soul Is Rested, Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered (New York: Bantam Books, 1977); Kim Lacy Rogers, Life and Death in the Delta (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Theodore Rosengarten and Nate Shaw, All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw (New York: Knopf, 1974); Thad Sitton and Dan Utley, From Can See to Can't: Texas Cotton Farmers on the Southern Prairies (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997); Thad Sitton and James H. Conrad, Freedom Colonies, Independent Black Texans in the Time of Jim Crow (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005).

11 Paul Thompson, The Voice of the Past: Oral History, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); Valerie Yow, Recording Oral History, A Guide for the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2nd ed. (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2005).

12 Marjorie Hunt, “The Smithsonian Folklife and Oral History Interviewing Guide, Smithsonian Institution,” Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, 2003, http://www.folklife.si.edu/explore/Resources/InterviewGuide/InterviewGuide_home.html (accessed January 6, 2011); “Fundamentals of Oral History: Texas Preservation Guidelines” (Austin: Texas Historical Commission, 1999), http://www.thc.state.tx.us/oralhistory/ohdefault.shtml (accessed January 6, 2011); “Regional Oral History Office Tips for Interviewers” from Willa K. Baum's Oral History for the Local Historical Society, 3rd ed., 1987, http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/resources/rohotips.html (accessed January 6, 2011); “Oral History Workshop on the Web,” Baylor University Institute for Oral History, http://www.baylor.edu/oralhistory/index.php?id=23560 (accessed January 6, 2011); “A Guide to Recording Oral History,” New Zealand History Online, http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/handsonhistory/oral-history (accessed January 6, 2011); “Voices from the Past: Oral History,” The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, http://www.hsp.org/default.aspx?id=517 (accessed January 6, 2011).

13 Jennifer Asenas interviewed Nelson Linder, the head of the Austin National Association for the Advancement of Colored People four times during the semester (Spring 2004). At the conclusion of the semester, they decided to continue the interviews and conducted two more sessions. She felt nervous during the first interview and at the end asked if she could return for a second session. By the end of the second interview, Linder asked if she wanted to return at the same time in two weeks. They continued this pattern from March through June.

14 For a fascinating look at African-Americans and collective memory, see History and Memory in African American Culture, ed. Genevieve Fabre and Robert O'Meally (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), quotation from page 3.

15 Gemma Corradi Fiumara, The Other Side of Language, A Philosophy of Listening, trans. Charles Lambert (London: Routledge, 1990), 28, 33.

16 Ken Metzler, Creative Interviewing, the Writer's Guide to Gathering Information by Asking Questions (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997), 87; and Metzler's reference: Ralph G. Nichols and Leonard A. Stevens, Are You Listening? (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1957).

17 Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “Afterward: Reverberations,” in Remembering, Oral History as Performance, ed. Della Pollock (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), 96.

18 In their analysis of the use of personal narratives in the social sciences and history, Mary Jo Maynes, Jennifer Pierce, and Barbara Laslett comment on sociologist Marjorie De Vault's experiences of interviewing across racial differences. DeVault listened carefully to everyday talk, with its oblique and indirect references to race, sensitive to her narrator's pauses, qualifiers, hesitations, and “talk that circles around race.” “For DeVault, who is a white woman, ‘hearing’ race and ethnicity in the stories she was being told required active attention and analysis rather than passive listening.” Mary Jo Maynes, Jennifer L. Pierce, and Barbara Laslett, Telling Stories, The Use of Personal Narratives in the Social Sciences and History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), 121; from Marjorie DeVault, “Ethnicity and Expertise: Racial-Ethnic Knowledge in Sociological Research,” in Liberating Method: Feminism and Social Research (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999), 85.

19 For additional information about the project, please see: “Introduction, African American Texans Oral History Project,” Online Took Kit for Teaching African American History, University of Texas at Austin, http://www.utexas.edu/world/lifteveryvoice/histories/index.html; Patrick Beach, “Black Austinites Share Stories for UT Oral History Project,” Austin American Statesman, August 15, 2010, http://www.statesman.com/life/black-austinites-share-stories-for-ut-oral-history-859968.html?cxtype=rss_ece_frontpage; Interactive video and audio: http://www.statesman.com/news/interactive-oral-histories-of-african-americans-in-austin-858560.html; and “Listening Across Difference,” Smithsonian Education, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKbTMta6Ku8.

20 See Marjorie L. McLellan, “Case Studies in Oral History and Community Learning,” Oral History Review 25, nos 1–2 (Summer/Fall 1998): 81–112 where she gives an overview of a number of interactive oral history projects about race; Hall, “Afterward: Reverberations,” 187–98 where she discusses an oral history and performance project with students about the “ordeal of desegregation” in Chapel Hill, NC; and Keeping the Struggle Alive, Studying Desegregation in Our Town, ed. Michelle Fine et al. (New York: Teachers College Press, 2002).

21 See Valerie Yow, “Do I Like Them Too Much?”: Effects of the Oral History Interview on the Interviewer and Vice Versa,” Oral History Review 24, no. 1 (Summer, 1997): 55–79; and the special issue of The Oral History Review, “Theme Articles: Practice and Pedagogy,” 25, nos 1–2 (Summer/Fall 1998), especially the article by Vicki L. Ruiz, “Situating Stories: The Surprising Consequences of Oral History,” pp. 71–80 in which she discusses the self-ethnographies of three of her students.

22 All of the listening exercises were conducted in 2008 and 2009, although the quotations for this essay are derived from both the graduate and undergraduate 2008 listening journals. Individual attributions are associated with each quotation. All quotations are from unpublished papers from the class and are used with permission from the students. On several occasions, names were withheld to protect the privacy of the student and his or her narrator.

23 Josie Smith noted the intentionality of listening and wrote that her sense of empathy made her a good listener, even across differences. “I love feeling connected to people and listening to someone is a great way to feel connected to them.” Josie Smith, “Listening Journal,” unpublished graduate student paper, Oral Narrative as History graduate seminar, University of Texas at Austin, 2008.

24 Meg Brooker, Listening Journal, unpublished graduate student paper, Oral Narrative as History graduate seminar, University of Texas at Austin, 2008.

25 Katherine Andrews, Listening Journal, unpublished graduate student paper, Oral Narrative as History graduate seminar, University of Texas at Austin, 2008.

26 James Spradley's guides to ethnographic fieldwork stand as classics. See James P. Spradley and David W. McCurdy, The Cultural Experience, Ethnography in Complex Society (Chicago: Science Research Associates, 1972) and James P. Spradley Participant Observation (Belmont: Wadsworth, Thomas Learning, 1980).

27 Roger Gatchet, Listening Journal, unpublished graduate student paper, Oral Narrative as History graduate seminar, University of Texas at Austin, 2008.

28 Angie Ahlgren, Listening Journal, unpublished graduate student paper, Oral Narrative as History graduate seminar, University of Texas at Austin, 2008.

29 Sarah Kim, Listening Journal, unpublished graduate student paper, Oral Narrative as History graduate seminar, University of Texas at Austin, 2008.

30 Allison Devereux, Listening Journal, unpublished undergraduate student paper, Oral History, Identity, and Diversity Plan II seminar, University of Texas at Austin, 2008.

31 Mary Marshall Clark, “Resisting Attrition in Stories of Trauma,” Narrative 13, no. 3 (October 2005): 294–8.

32 Gatchet, Listening Journal.

33 Kim, Listening Journal.

34 Brooker, Listening Journal.

35 Gatchet, Listening Journal.

36 Callie Holmes, Listening Journal, unpublished graduate student paper, Oral Narrative as History graduate seminar, University of Texas at Austin, 2008.

37 Kim, Listening Journal.

38 Ahlgren, Listening Journal.

39 Andrews, Listening Journal.

40 Devereux, Listening Journal.

41 Anne Frugé, Listening Journal, unpublished undergraduate student paper, Oral History, Identity, and Diversity Plan II seminar, University of Texas at Austin, 2008.

42 Name withheld to protect privacy.

43 Holmes, Listening Journal.

44 Rachel Meyerson, Listening Journal, unpublished undergraduate student paper, Oral History, Identity, and Diversity Plan II seminar, University of Texas at Austin, 2008; Frugé, Listening Journal.

45 Frugé, Listening Journal.

46 Devereux, Listening Journal.

47 Brooker, Listening Journal.

48 Meyerson, Listening Journal.

49 Elizabeth Runner, Listening Journal, unpublished undergraduate student paper, Oral History, Identity, and Diversity Plan II seminar, University of Texas at Austin, 2008.

50 Devereux, Listening Journal.

51 Keeley Steenson, Listening Journal, unpublished undergraduate student paper, Oral History, Identity, and Diversity Plan II seminar, University of Texas at Austin, 2008.

52 Gatchet, Listening Journal; Holmes, Listening Journal; Andrews, Listening Journal.

53 Brooker, Listening Journal; Brooker, E-mail message to the author, January 8, 2011; Meyerson, Listening Journal; Devereux, Listening Journal.

54 Holmes, Listening Journal.

55 Andrews, Listening Journal; Kim, Listening Journal.

56 Frugé, Listening Journal.

57 Gatchet, Listening Journal.

58 Holmes, Listening Journal.

59 Andrews, Listening Journal; Kim, Listening Journal.

60 Steenson, Listening Journal; Runner, Listening Journal.

61 Frugé, Listening Journal.

62 Devereux, Listening Journal.

63 Holmes, Listening Journal; Kim, Listening Journal.

64 Gatchet, Listening Journal; Holmes, Listening Journal.

65 Devereux, Listening Journal.

66 Names withheld to protect privacy.

67 Udelle Robinson, Listening Journal, unpublished undergraduate student paper, Oral History, Identity, and Diversity Plan II seminar, University of Texas at Austin, 2008.

68 Brooker, Listening Journal; Gatchet, Listening Journal.

69 Ahlgren, Listening Journal; Angie Ahlgren, E-mail message to the author, January 6, 2011.

70 Karl Jun, Listening Journal, unpublished undergraduate student paper, Oral History, Identity, and Diversity Plan II seminar, University of Texas at Austin, 2008.

71 Jess Tillis, E-mail message to the author, University of Texas Scholarship Essay, March 31, 2008.

72 Devereux, Listening Journal.

73 Meyerson, Listening Journal.

74 Seth Owens, Listening Journal, unpublished undergraduate student paper, Oral History, Identity, and Diversity Plan II seminar, University of Texas at Austin, 2008.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Martha Norkunas

Martha Norkunas holds a Ph.D. in Folklore from Indiana University's Folklore Institute. From 1999 to 2009, Norkunas directed the Project in Interpreting the Texas Past (ITP) 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 apply their knowledge to social and cultural issues, including creating more diverse and inclusive interpretations at Texas historic sites. ITP produced award-winning films, Web sites, exhibits, educational material, posters, brochures, oral history booklets, an in-depth oral history project with African Americans in Texas, and an oral history project exploring race and identity among college students. In August 2009, Norkunas became Professor of Oral and Public History at Middle Tennessee State University in Mufreesboro, TN, where she directs the African American Oral History Project. Her current research involves listening, racial memory, and the relationship between familial memory and history