Teaching Through Oral History

One major purpose of the Oral History Project is to engage in teaching through oral history. To that end, we have created one new course and have also woven oral history practices and resources into some existing courses. The new course is: Prophetic Pioneers in Religious Education (view the syllabus [PDF 146K]). Existing courses have included: "Global Feminisms and Christian Tradition" and "Dynamics of Religious Community: Gender, Culture, and Change" (a doctoral seminar).

In addition, we have sponsored numerous public teaching events, involving students, faculty and staff of Candler School of Theology and Emory University, as well as people from the larger community.

The pedagogical goals of the Oral History Project are listed below.

Pedagogical goals:

Teach the art of oral history—including skills of collaborative organizing and planning, engaging with others in significant conversation (formal interviewing and less formal conversation), listening to and appreciating another, and sharing others’ stories with ethical appropriateness and respect.
Teach the art of hermeneutics with living texts—including analysis and interpretation of selected women's lives, and reflection on their lives in relation to historical movements and contemporary existential and theological issues.
Teach the art of discerning dynamics and patterns of religious life—especially studying the interplay of religion, gender and culture.
Create a collection of teaching resources—involving students in collecting and preserving women’s stories, which will be preserved in a library collection and will be accessible to later generations of students, scholars and church leaders for classroom teaching, individual study, and edification of the church.
Teach through oral history in extra-curricular and public venues—presenting a collection of the histories in a variety of public events and documents.