James Farmer at UMW: Publishin Oral Histories with UMW Blogs

This presentation will discuss some of the dynamics of publishing oral history interviews with UMW blogs.  As part of a senior seminar on oral history and James Farmer taught by Professor Jess Rigelhaupt in fall 2009, students were trained in oral history interviewing and studied oral history methodology, the civil rights movement, and Farmer’s life history.  Students then conducted interviews with faculty, staff, and former students on Farmer’s legacy at UMW.  As a class, students built a website, farmeroralhistory.umwblogs.org, which documents their analysis and makes the interviews widely accessible.

Another component of the course involved using umwblogs (hist471c8f09.umwblogs.org) as a central gathering point for students’ responses to the readings.  This presentation will discuss how the website served as a repository for students’ writing and as place for students to share information they researched on oral history on the world wide web.