Session Six · Unit Two — The Neighbors
Voices of 2601 — Oral History and the Interview
The Genre: Oral History & the Interview
Handouts & Worksheets
Main Points of the Lesson
- Oral history hands over the microphone. The writer’s art in oral history is to disappear: to ask well, listen closely, and shape without distorting.
- A precedent from our building’s own years. Between 1936 and 1940, while 2601 was being completed, writers of the Federal Writers’ Project gathered thousands of American life histories now held by the Library of Congress.
- Good questions are open doors. “Tell me about the first apartment you ever lived in” opens a story; “Did you like it?” closes one.
- Transcription is interpretation. Every decision — where to cut, whether to keep the “um,” how to paragraph — shapes the voice. Keep the speaker’s rhythm; cut only repetition.
- Read it back. The speaker should hear or read the finished piece before anyone else. Their approval is part of its truth.
Reading for Class — Click to Open
- Library of Congress, American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936–1940 — open the Library of Congress collection
Browse by state; choose two Pennsylvania life histories and read them as both documents and literature. - WFMT, The Studs Terkel Radio Archive — listen at the archive
Listen to any interview by the great oral historian of Working and Division Street: America. Notice how little he says. - Textbook: Tell It Slant, Chapter 4, “Gathering the Threads of History” — see the textbook guide
After Our Discussion — Critical Reception
- Federal Writers’ Project — history (Wikipedia) — The New Deal program that employed writers to document American life.
- Oral history — methods and ethics (Wikipedia) — An overview of the discipline, its practices, and its debates.
In-Class Writing Prompt — Laptops Closed
Paired interviews. With a partner, take turns interviewing for eight minutes each using a single opening question: Tell me about the first place you ever lived that was yours. Ask only follow-up questions that begin with what, how, or tell me more. Take notes by hand. Then write a 150-word monologue in your partner’s voice and read it back to them for corrections.
Your partner owns their story. Nothing leaves the room without their permission.
What happens with this: nothing is collected. It is yours, written on paper, in your notebook. No one is asked to read aloud who does not wish to.
Discussion Questions
- Read the opening of one life history aloud. Whose voice do you hear — the speaker’s or the writer’s?
- What did the Federal Writers’ Project value in ordinary lives? What might it have missed?
- When you shape someone’s words, where does editing end and invention begin?
- What questions would you most want to ask a resident who has lived at 2601 for forty years?
Homework
- Read Tell It Slant, Chapter 7, “Glorious Facts: Research and the Research Essay.”
- Conduct your interview (if you have arranged one) and shape it into an oral-history monologue of 500–1,000 words. Return it to the speaker for approval.
- Read for Session 7: the building’s history page, the Penn Architectural Archives finding aid for Aaron Colish, and the Brevity blog essay “Braids.”
For the 2601 Anthology
With permission, oral histories become the heart of Under One Roof: residents telling the building’s story in their own words.
Before Next Time — Session 7
The Building’s Biography — The Researched and Braided Essay. We go to the archive. Our lives braided with the history of 2601 — its architects, its mural, and the city around it.