Students • Faculty • Staff
The Housatonic Heritage Oral History Center at Berkshire Community College, located in Koussevitzky 107, hires students and hosts internships, and we work with faculty who wish to engage their students with oral history projects, including via Service Learning. Students have assisted with interviews, conducted interviews, edited video and audio, created a podcast, and conducted background research prior to an interview. Each two-hour interview can require 30 or more hours of related tasks , and skills acquired in this work are many.
We work with many oral history projects in the region, and we do oral history projects here on campus as well. The BCC Oral History Project includes interviews with former faculty and staff and alumni/ae.
Above (top), after a workshop on Oral History and Social Justice, here, professor Tattiya Maruco and presenter Alisa Del Tufo, of Groundswell, Oral History for Social Change. Tattiya Maruco has used oral history in her classes, brought a class to this workshop, and brought another class to the NAACP Oral History Project exhibit at the Berkshire Museum. We seek out these partnerships with community organizations outside of BCC, within BCC, and also with faculty, staff and students.
Sam Redman, Oral Historian and University of Massachusetts Professor of History, speaking to several BCC faculty members about oral history essential tools and resources. Sam helped us with the startup of the BCC Oral History Project and is a resource for oral history practitioners.
Call Judith Monachina at X1025 or email: jmonachina@berkshirecc.edu for more information.