On Thursday, April 12, 2018, an interactive exhibit will be curated by the students and faculty of Columbia’s Oral History Master of Arts program.
From grade school we learn that History is the Thing that Happened. The bell rings and we leave History in a closed textbook, a specific classroom, and carry on with our day. We consume media, we process news, we have conversations, we think about tomorrow. But in doing so we are participating in history: constantly orienting ourselves in relation to existing and selected narratives.
HEAR & NOW is a multimedia pop-up presenting the fieldwork of scholars who are also activists, researchers who are also storytellers, oral historians who are also community members. We, the members of OHMA, are intent on confronting our own roles, rights, and responsibilities as producers of knowledge, and urgently embrace the changeability of history. In many ways, this exhibit is an intervention. The telling of the past has been actively and hegemonically filtered, but we can work to recuperate silenced narratives and to change what capital-H History remembers moving forward. Let HEAR & NOW represent one of many efforts this year to recuperate these narratives.
Exhibits include:
Life Imitating Art: The Legacy of Marlon Riggs in Today's America by Brad Bailey
Buried Alive by Elyse Blennerhassett
Comparative Classrooms: Teaching to Transgress by Valerie Fendt
Spectrum of Spirituality by Alissa Funderburk
'I'll Fly Away': An Oral History of Love, Loss and Leave-taking by Rozanne Gooding Silverwood
Ballots Over Bars by Elly Kalfus
Restoring Memory by Tomoko Kubota
The Picture the Homeless Oral History Project by Lynn Lewis
Why We Stayed: The Experiences of Poland's Remaining Jews, 1945-2008 by Filip Mazurczak
Who/What/Where? by Kyna Patel
Down to the Docks: The Longshoreman Speaks Up by Meave Sheehan
ABANDONED: Stories from Survivors of Gun Violence by Holly Werner-Thomas
Harlem Small Business by Yameng Xia
Come, to the love of Christ by Yiyi Zhang
Carmine's House by Dian Zi
This event is FREE, open to the public, accessible, and open to all ages! Refreshments will be served.
