An Official Employee Publication From the Office of University Relations

Participants to study the growing influence of oral history and literature

Following last year’s success, KU will play host to a new oral history workshop
centered on stories of Kansas migration. The workshop will begin at 9 a.m. March 9 in Alderson Auditorium at the Kansas Union.

Workshop sponsors are the Hall Center for the Humanities and the Project on the History of Black Writing.

Sessions will focus on stories of black, Swedish, German, and Mexican migration to Kansas to discover when and why they chose Kansas and what the process of assimilation was like.

Maryemma Graham, KU professor of English and the workshop’s creator, says the failure to include oral history in the canon of stories is “certainly one of the great ironies of our time, since there could be no America as we know it without these stories.”

The growing influence of oral history and oral literacy has created a new way to gather, evaluate and maintain cultural traditions.

How to initiate and incorporate oral history techniques in academic and other settings will be part of the workshop’s theme. Examples of oral history work done by faculty at KU, Haskell, and others from throughout the region and country will be featured.

This year’s opening session will address the theory and practice of oral history, followed by the stories of three Kansans who ventured out to make their mark. Two became filmmakers, and a third became a missionary in Japan.

“From Kansas to Japan,” Polly Bales’ presentation based on her biography of Kate Hansen, and “From Kansas to Africa,” Conrad Froelich’s look at the filmmakers Martin and Osa Johnson, will recount these stories.

The closing presentation will concentrate on the issues facing the field in the near future.