Georgia College and the Flannery O’Connor Institute for the Humanities is hosting free oral history classes for the public through a three-year oral history grant funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The goal is to teach the community another method to preserve local history.
Professor of History Dr. Stephanie Opperman is the lead investigator on the grant and has experience gathering and teaching oral history. The focus of the grant is to learn more about local experiences with class, gender, race, disability, and more during (but not limited to) 1951-1964, the time of O’Connor’s writing career at Andalusia Farm in Milledgeville. As part of this goal, Opperman and her students have been collecting oral history from locals in the area to expand the historical narrative of Milledgeville during that time.
“As part of the grant, one of our outcomes is to offer the community a free and accessible way to learn about oral history so they may know how to contribute to the grant if they wish and may collect their own stories for future preservation,” said Opperman. “Oral history is a methodology to document unwritten stories and there’s much more to it than simply telling a story.”
Opperman will be offering two in-person classes and an online course, that is already available, to teach the community about oral history. In class, participants will learn how to conduct an interview, carry a conversation, record details, and more. They will also learn how to answer and share their side of the story if they are the interviewee.
“Oral history is working with an individual as a narrator to document their life story or recollections regarding a specific time or place. It’s a very collaborative process,” said Opperman. “A very important part of the process is allowing the individual to review the transcripts and edit what they are saying to ensure the finished product most accurately represents their story. So, they’re going to be learning how to develop a story together.”
The in-person classes will be held Sept. 10 at 5 p.m. at Allen’s Market and Dec. 4 at 5 p.m. at the Mary Vinson Memorial Library. Each class is an hour long and free to attend. The online course is free and accessible anytime, and anyone may register at bit.ly/ histbasics.
“Another aspect of this grant is allowing students in my local history classes to have hands-on service learning and community building experience. They meet community partners and engage further with the community,” said Opperman. “In that same perspective, the community can further engage with each other by being able to conduct their own oral history collections or further document personal stories from their friends and family.”
Collecting the Past: Flannery O’Connor and Milledgeville is the title of the overarching project funded by the grant.
While those who take the class are not expected to contribute to the project, anyone is welcome to share their own stories as a narrator or submit recorded interviews they have conducted with friends and family to become part of the collection.
If you are interested in learning more about the project, visit collectingthepastmilledgeville. wordpress.com, email the project coordinator at lani.daniel@gcsu.edu or call at 706-998-6292.
All stories collected by Collecting the Past will be used to produce a community archive housed in the Digital Library of Georgia.
Completed interviews are currently available at https://kb.gcsu.edu/ collectingthepast/ as well as new uploads weekly on Spotify and YouTube, accessible through the project’s website.