Oral History Project (Part C and D only)

1. Paper, 4-6 full pages in length. If it is 3.5 pages it will be marked down for being under-length. You will not be marked down for going over 6 pages.
2. Double-spaced, 12pt Times New Roman font, 1 inch margins
3. Written in a creative format
4. Combines (equally) interview and research material. The voice of your interviewee is present in the paper. Use their exact words, do not paraphrase your interviewee.
5. In-text citations/footnotes included throughout the paper
6. Bibliography/Works Cited with a minimum of 4 scholarly sources
   • All sources listed in your bibliography must be used in your paper
7. Project Reflection, 1-2 pages in length
   • Answer all of the questions
   • Submit paper, bibliography, and project reflection together as ONE document.

Here are some FAQs/reminders below regarding the oral history paper.

• A complete set of directions is located in this PDF document.
• Make sure you use a creative format. A standard essay-style paper is not what you should be submitting for this assignment. Some popular options are a series of letters or journal/diary entries written from the perspective of your interviewee. Other students have done newspaper articles and creative story writing in the format of a play or narrative. Please take a moment to review the requirements and videos on the previous Oral History module.
  • For example, if you are writing in the voice of your grandmother in a diary entry, you could write generally about the experiences that she or other women had based on your research. Just an example paragraph for some frame of reference:
    “Today, we struggled on the farm. I just want to get away. I know there are other girls in my situation…not going to school and all…but I read about the jobs they have in the newspapers. I just imagine the lives of those factory women: *insert informal research about the stories of working class women in factories of the time.(citation or footnote number)* I know they have it hard too, but to be around all those other girls. It seems like a scream. All I see here is my family, and I just want to be bigger than that. I want to live my life on a faster pace.”
    I hope this helps! This is intended for you to be creative in the narrative that would be representative of experiences of the time and see your interviewee’s story within those broader struggles and triumphs throughout history.
• The easiest way to incorporate research into your creative format is to use Chicago-style footnotes. This means you would put your direct quote or paraphrased information from the source into the footnote at the bottom of the page along with the source citation.
• If you want to use MLA-style citations you can incorporate research into your creative format in a variety of ways, these are some examples for a letter or journal:
  • “I read in the newspaper today that more and more women are working mothers…”
  • “The majority of my friends choose to get married right after high school but I wanted to go to college”
  • “I was talking to Carmen and she read that 75% of working women feel guilty about not spending more time with their children…” and you would follow a statement like these with an MLA citation.
• You can use your interviewee’s words, and this is strongly encouraged. Copy and paste them from your interview notes and cite them in your paper (interviewee lastname, firstname. “Interview with interviewer name.” Date of the interview month, day, and year). For example, if I interviewed my mother, Franca Bordato, it would look like this (Bordato, Franca. “Interview with Sonia Brighenti. November 15, 2021.”)