I am not the common history major, at least not at Monmouth University. As a South American immigrant, English is not my first language and I have only been exposed to American history beginning my sophomore year of high school. This means I’ve spent significantly less time learning it than most of my fellow history […]

Oral History in the Mid-Atlantic Region (OHMAR) and the Immigrant and Ethnic History Society (IEHS) presented a workshop at Monmouth University on September 15th, 2017 that left the attendees ready to dig into their own projects. Professor Melissa Ziobro of Monmouth University hosted Anne Rush of OHMAR and the University of Maryland College Park, who […]

Being a first-year student can be intimidating and frightening. You might have no friends on campus, and if you commute, like me, it can be hard to make them. My point is that it can be scary, and it’s hard to get out there and make a name for yourself or participate at all, let […]

At the end of April, I had the opportunity to attend the Friday session of the OHMAR 2017 annual conference “Oral History & the City†at Columbia University. Besides the fact that this was a unique conference itself from the astounding presentations to the genderless #RESISTANCE hats taped onto bathroom signs, it was an extra […]

On September 16, 2017, Opera Philadelphia will premiere We Shall Not Be Moved, a new opera by composer Daniel Bernard Roumain, librettist Marc Bamuthi Joseph, and director/choreographer Bill T. Jones. The production is an outgrowth of Hip H’opera, a partnership between Opera Philadelphia and Art Sanctuary, which launched in 2007 to engage Philadelphia high school […]

Housed on the campus of Monmouth University in West Long Branch, NJ, The Bruce Springsteen Special Collection and Archive comprises nearly 35,000 items from 48 countries. These range from books and concert memorabilia to articles and promotional materials, serving “the research and informational needs of music fans, scholars, authors, and others with a serious interest […]

We’re living through an historic moment. Whatever your political persuasion, your constitutional sensibility, your race, economic status, gender, sexual orientation, or country of origin, this recent election cycle has created a cultural and political watershed, and only in hindsight will we be able to process, make sense of, and understand its broadest implications. Now, as […]

Two years ago I began teaching an oral history course in which students interview recent immigrants to the Washington DC area. Students and interviewees have the option to donate their interviews and transcripts to the Immigrant Voices archive at the University of Maryland’s Center for the History of the New America. (Yes, I make my […]

The fledgling Monmouth Memories Oral History Program is a long-term, open-ended effort to capture and preserve the organizational heritage of Monmouth University in West Long Branch, NJ. I started the program in December 2012, hoping to interview some of the campus’s student veterans, and expanded the scope in late Summer 2014 to include alumni and, in […]

The theme for this year’s OHMAR conference was “Oral History & Technology,†and participants presented their ideas on how evolving technologies can be applied to creating and sharing oral histories with the public. For my first OHMAR conference as a board member, I was excited to facilitate the paper discussion on “Oral Histories, Museums and Historic […]