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ABSTRACT
Written from the age of COVID-19, while attempts to mitigate and measure the effects of the coronavirus are ongoing, oral history stands as a methodology that offers both human connection and a tool to begin to document the lived experience of the crisis.
Notes
1. C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York: Macmillan, 1944), 76.
2. Arnstein Aassve, Guido Alfani, Francesco Gandolfi, Marco Le Moglie, “Pandemics and Social Capital: From the Spanish Flu of 1918–19 to COVID-19,” Vox, March 22, 2020, https://voxeu.org/article/pandemics-and-social-capital.
3. These first two iterations can be found here: Margaux Alvarez, Flatten the Curve with This Corona Virus Home Work Out - Always Free for All Levels No Equip No Prob, March 20, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZlHZyZNnvo; David Davenport, “Bad Student Scores in History and Civics Flatten the Wrong Curve,” Washington Examiner, April 25, 2020, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/bad-student-scores-in-history-and-civics-flatten-the-wrong-curve. Varied applications of the “flattening the curve” nomenclature were also found related to air pollution, anxiety, bureaucracy, climate change, crude oil, economic benefits, economic demand destruction, education, fitness, fraud, gender-based violence, hobbies, joblessness, loneliness, mental health, politics, and xenophobia.
4. Ed Yong, “Why the Coronavirus Is So Confusing,” The Atlantic, April 29, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/pandemic-confusing-uncertainty/610819/.
5. For an extended discussion of the place of oral history as information in the digital information landscape, see Stephen M. Sloan, “Swimming in the Exaflood: Oral History as Information in the Digital Age,” in Oral History and Digital Humanities: Voice, Access, and Engagement, eds. Douglas A. Boyd and Mary A. Larson (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 175–86.
6. Robinson Meyer, “The Grim Conclusions of the Largest-Ever Study of Fake News,” The Atlantic, March 8, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/largest-study-ever-fake-news-mit-twitter/555104.
7. David J. Rothkopf is credited with first coining this term in a Washington Post op-ed piece on the SARS outbreak in 2003. See Rothkopf, “When the Buzz Bites Back,” The Washington Post, May 11, 2003, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/05/11/when-the-buzz-bites-back/bc8cd84f-cab6-4648-bf58-0277261af6cd/.
8. Ben Zimmer, “‘Infodemic’: When Unreliable Information Spreads Far and Wide,” The Wall Street Journal, March 5, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/infodemic-when-unreliable-information-spreads-far-and-wide-11583430244.
9. Karen Hao and Tanya Basu, “The Coronavirus Is the First True Social-Media ‘Infodemic,’” MIT Technology Review, February 12, 2020, https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/12/844851/the-coronavirus-is-the-first-true-social-media-infodemic/.
10. Ed Yong, “Why the Coronavirus Is So Confusing.”
11. “Storygathering” is used here as an umbrella term for documentation efforts collecting and archiving records of experiences.
12. Oral historians working in the aftermath of crisis has roots as far back as post-action interviews with soldiers in World War II. Episodes of international disaster or violence in the twentieth century increasingly found oral historians working in the wake of events to document experience of phenomena. In the twenty-first century, oral history work on the September 11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina were landmark events in the prevalence of oral historians working in settings post catastrophe. In 2006, the Oral History Association began annual support for researchers through the Emerging Crises Oral History Research Fund. The variety of work enabled through this initiative is reflective of the broad work in crisis settings over the pasty fifteen years. See https://www.oralhistory.org/award/emerging-crisis-research-fund/.
13. “COVID-19 Documentation Project,” Tufts University Digital Collections and Archives, https://dca.tufts.edu/donate/COVID-19-Documentation-Project (accessed May 24, 2020).
14. Sarah Ponichtera, “Reconnecting with Each Other in the Current Pandemic,” Special Collections and The Gallery (Seton Hall University Libraries, April 13, 2020), http://blogs.shu.edu/archives/2020/04/reconnecting-with-each-other-in-the-current-pandemic/.
15. Lockdown Stories has versions in French, English, and Spanish. The English language version is available here: Pierrine Didier and Laurent Gontier, “Lockdown Stories: A Participatory Research Project,” Lockdown Stories: About, https://www.lockdown-stories.net/about.html (accessed May 23, 2020). Many COVID-19 journaling projects cite Mass Observation as their inspiration. The MO Archive, housed at the University of Sussex, UK, has launched its own COVID-19 initiative drawing on their tradition of storygathering. As it notes, “Since the 1930s, ordinary people have written to Mass Observation about their experiences of key events including the Munich Crisis, Blitz, rationing, Coronation of Queen Elizabeth, Falkland’s War, September 11th, 2001, and Brexit.” See here for more information: “The Mass Observation Archive,” http://www.massobs.org.uk/ (accessed May 23, 2020).
16. “Project Redial: Coronavirus Stories,” https://www.projectredial.com/about (accessed May 23, 2020).
17. In most cases, the storygathering efforts specify very short clips. Sometimes giving the standard of one to three minutes of audio or video.
18. A survey of 130 storygathering projects revealed only five that make use of oral historians in their documentation initiatives. The crowdsourced list of projects surveyed is available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v5tso8spFq6SpW53h2OJULcdRoPEbyI6xpah31kW-H0/edit. Ed Summers generated this document in response to a tweet from Somaya Langley. See Somaya Langley, Twitter post, April 2, 2020, 7:22 a.m., https://twitter.com/criticalsenses.
19. Roni Zeiger, “Data Are Shadows of Stories,” Siegel Rare Neuroimmune Association (SRNA), January 15, 2015, https://wearesrna.org/data-shadows-stories/. Smart Patients is an online community for patients and families affected by a variety of illnesses. See https://www.smartpatients.com/.
20. The Desert Research Institute is a basic and applied environmental research unit within the University of Nevada system. It has campuses in both Reno and Las Vegas. Participants can share corona virus stories here: https://spryng.io/covid-19-and-decision-making/.
21. “What Is Your COVID-19 Story?” DRI: Desert Research Institute, April 13, 2020, https://www.dri.edu/what-is-your-covid-19-story/.
22. Ibid.
23. Stephen M. Sloan, “The Fabric of Crisis: Approaching the Heart of Oral History,” in Listening on the Edge: Oral History in the Aftermath of Crisis, eds. Mark Cave and Stephen M. Sloan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 266.
24. “NYC Covid-19 Oral History, Narrative and Memory Archive,” INCITE Columbia University, https://incite.columbia.edu/covid19-oral-history-project (accessed May 23, 2020).
25. One prospect that offers great promise here is the ways in which COVID-19 calls for transnational oral history projects through partnerships between practitioners around the globe. At the date of this writing a task force is being formed by the International Oral History Association to promote such work.
26. Rapid response collecting generally refers to museums promptly acquiring objects that are representative of significant moments in recent history.
27. Jordan Brinker, “The COVID-19 Oral History Project,” IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute, March 27, 2020, https://iahi.sitehost.iu.edu/2020/03/27/the-covid-19-oral-history-project/.
28. “Stanford University COVID-19 Oral History Project,” Stanford Historical Society, April 22, 2020, https://historicalsociety.stanford.edu/news/stanford-university-covid-19-oral-history-project.
29. The spike in the interest in remote recording led several outlets to offer direction for this early on in the experience with COVID-19, including the Columbia Center for Oral History Research, the American Folklore Society, the Vermont Folklife Center, and Baylor University’s Institute for Oral History. Jointly sponsored by the Oral History Association, the March 31 webinar by Baylor, “Oral History at a Distance: Recording Remote Interviews,” can be accessed here: https://www.oralhistory.org/2020/03/26/webinar-oral-history-at-a-distance-conducting-remote-interviews/.
30. Manyu Jiang, “The Reason Zoom Calls Drain Your Energy,” BBC, April 22, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200421-why-zoom-video-chats-are-so-exhausting.
31. Julia Sklar, “‘Zoom Fatigue’ is Taxing the Brain. Here’s Why that Happens,” National Geographic, April 24, 2020, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/coronavirus-zoom-fatigue-is-taxing-the-brain-here-is-why-that-happens.html.
32. Ibid.
33. For examples, see Mark Cave and Stephen M. Sloan, eds., Listening on the Edge: Oral History in the Aftermath of Crisis (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
34. Mark Cave, “Introduction: What Remains,” in Listening on the Edge: Oral History in the Aftermath of Crisis, eds. Mark Cave and Stephen M. Sloan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 11.
35. Monica Maalouf, “Commentary: Collateral Damage in a Doctor’s Fight against COVID-19: Personal Stories and Connection,” Chicago Tribune, April 8, 2020, https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-opinion-coronavirus-doctors-personal-stories-maalouf-20200408-6d3m4nquz5g7ji4lxdgph5nmle-story.html.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Stephen M. Sloan
Stephen M. Sloan is the director of the Institute for Oral History and an associate professor of history at Baylor University. His publications include the co-edited Listening on the Edge: Oral History in the Aftermath of Crisis (winner of the Oral History Association’s 2015 Book Award) and Tattooed on My Soul: Texans Remember World War II. Sloan organizes research projects, leads community oral history initiatives, directs grants and contracts, and conducts field interviews. A recent project interviewing survivors of genocide that now live in the state of Texas won a 2018 Elizabeth B. Mason Award from the Oral History Association. Sloan is active in the international and national oral history community, including past service as president of OHA.