What is the role of the visual in oral history?
Please come to the final CEREV Workshop of the term led by Mark Watson (Concordia Anthropology).
Friday, December 3, 2010, 1:30-3:00
History Seminar Room (LB-1014)
When in 1996 Charles Frake in his attempt to study the sense of place experienced by “natives” of the East Anglian fens in eastern England wrote that “[the natives] are sufficiently non-exotic to have never before, to my knowledge, attracted the attention of an ethnographer” he personified a common text-based bias by ignoring the photography of the nineteenth century scientist P.H. Emerson. Through an examination of Emerson’s photography Mark Watson will be asking questions about the “aura” of oral history and the role of the visual in communicating a sense of place and belonging in the world.
There are no readings for this workshop, but participants should take seriously the idea that the images themselves are ‘oral history’ and deserving of as much attention as a written article.
