Revealing Meaning, Broadcasting History: 
Notes on the Composition of Oral History Video
bill wolff, assistant professor of writing arts, rowan university, Glassboro, NJ
Conference on College composition   communication Louisville, Kentucky
March 17 - 20, 2010
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
&
contact me at @billwolff, william.i.wolff@gmail.com, http://williamwolff.org
Innovations in Teaching with Technology Grant
June 2008
Title
"Reconceiving 'Writing, Research, and Technology' by Introducing Multimodal Video Composition, Oral History, and Educational Outreach"

What
Requested $2500 for 20 Flip Video Cameras that students would be able to take home with them

Rationale
1. Writing is no longer just about using a keyboard to put words on a screen nor about using a pen to put words on paper. Writing, in our highly mediated, highly visual culture, is composing—in all the forms, media, and genres we can think of. It is the blending—or mashing-up—of images (still and moving), words, and music. Writing is also understanding how to use software applications—how the symbols, functions, and interfaces impact the resulting texts.

2. It is the only course in the Writing Arts curriculum with “research” in the title; yet, too often research has been supplanted by the appeal of playing with new technologies. By bringing together oral history theory and practice, video technology, and visual rhetoric theory the course has an opportunity to challenge students to consider how technologies (words, images, movies) can help us reveal the significance of the stories and histories of those whose voices are, for one reason or another, not heard. 
Funded!
Writing, Research, Technology
Course Description
Spring 2009, Fall 2009, Spring 2010
In this class, we are going to be extending traditional conceptions of composition by applying it to the medium of video. Kevin Kelly (2008) recently described the emerging video movement as a cultural shift “from book fluency to screen fluency, from literacy to visuality.” As a means of engaging visuality our primary assignment will be to create an oral history video composition that will ask us to think critically about how writing, research, and technology are in evolving in digital age. We are going to read theory on oral histories, learn oral history research methodologies, determine an area of study, interview people, and compose idea-driven videos that mash together interview footage with still images, primary documents, sound, and other video footage. We will also jump headlong into remix culture by creating our own videos by remixing and building on the creativity of others.
Course Model
Research-based composition 2 course wherein assignments are sequenced, students learn skills over time, and large research project is primary course assignment.
3 - 5 minute idea-driven yet entertaining video compsition based on short interviews with 25 - 30 random people students meet on the street. 
Spring 2009: What Does YouTube Mean to You?
Fall 2009, Spring 2010: The One Assignment
3 Main Assignments
Spring 2009: Semester-long vlogging

Fall 2009, Spring 2010: Two-part Remix assignment
Oral History Video Composition (10 week)
Primary Texts (in order of appearance)
M. Wesch, "An Anthrpopological Introduction to YouTube"
B. Gaylor, "RIP: A Remix Manefesto"
View it in full at http://www.hulu.com/watch/88782/rip-a-remix-manifesto
Oral History Video Composition Assignment
View Spring 2010 iteration at http://j.mp/bXqVaH
In their Introduction to the second edition of The Oral History Reader Perks and Thompson (2006) note that when one engages in the practice of oral history she is also challenging traditional notions of the construction of history. Correspondingly, by challenging history she is also challenging traditional conceptions that reliable research is the investigation of written texts found in libraries, databases, and archives. Later, in their opening words to Part I, they announce that human beings are now “in the middle of a fourth, dizzying digital revolution in oral history and its outcomes are impossible to predict” (p. 8). They describe this revolution as being a result of the proliferation of information technologies-email, the Internet, digital recording devices-and the potential for ubiquitous access to interviews. In short, “the future of oral history . . . has never been so exciting, or so uncertain” (p. 8).

With Flip Video Cameras in hand (or on tripod) we are going engage that exciting uncertainty by composing video oral histories of individuals whose voices on important social issues might never have been recorded, preserved, and broadcast to a world eager to watch, listen, learn about what others think and do. Our videos will not be about people, though we will learn about them through their interviews. Rather, the videos will explore a particular issue as understood by the people you interview. The distinction is subtle, but important. When conceiving of your issue, think in broad strokes at first but then narrow down to local specifics. We discuss this in great detail in class.
Assignment Overview
Selections from Three Student Oral History Videos
Conversations that Inform the Assignment
So What?
All history depends ultimately on its social purpose. The process of writing history changes with the content.
Paul Thompson (1988)

Oral sources are oral sources. Scholars are willing to admit that the actual document is the recorded tape; but almost all go on to work on the transcripts, and it is only transcripts that are published. Occasionally, tapes are destroyed: symbolic case of the destruction of the spoken word.
Alessandro Portelli (1979)

[T]he diversity of oral history consists in the fact that 'wrong' statements are still psychologically 'true' and that this truth may be equally as important as factually reliable sources.
Alessandro Portelli (1979)

Political domination involves historical definition.
Popular Memory Group (1982)
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on the oral history interview
This prezi can be found online at http://j.mp/cN3GUd.
with questions, comments, or to bounce off some ideas.
Please feel free to contact me william.i.wolff@gmail.com or on Twitter @billwolff
Thank you!!
critically aware recorders and composers of 
history and historical texts.
the nitty gritty
When it's all said and done, students . . .
deeper appreciation for the variety and variability of sources, the ethics of new methods of research, and the affordances of multiple modes of communication.
are more
have a
greater understanding of how research practices and technologies used to record, edit, present, and distribute information constrain or reveal history.
And their oral history videos . . .
have a
cognitive, historical, and technical artifacts that engage us at the level of ethos, pathos, and logos. 
are
reveal too much and not enough. 
array of signs that confounds us, challenges us, and asks us to rethink basic assumptions about individuals, institutions, and society. 
contain an
as public documents available for the world to see, they are meaningful, revealing, and important. 
and