Oral History Research on Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment
Roger Eardley-Pryor, Oral History Interviewer
Oral History Center of UC Berkeley
Closed. This professor is continuing with Fall 2024 apprentices on this project; no new apprentices needed for Spring 2025.
The Oral History Center (OHC) of The Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley has conducted thousands of oral history interviews since its establishment in 1953, including hundreds of deeply researched, multiple-session interviews with women and men engaged in natural resource extraction, energy production, and environmental activism. Transcripts and original audio/video of these interviews are deposited in The Bancroft Library and made available online to produce the nation's largest public, digitally accessible archive of environmental oral histories. Included among the OHC's environment, resource, and energy-themed interviews is a multi-decade oral history collection on mining, as well as an ongoing oral history project interviewing national leaders of the Sierra Club, one of the oldest, largest, and most influential environmental organizations in history. The OHC's interviews on mining share individual perspectives on an industry of resource extraction, while the Sierra Club oral histories reflect changes in environmental activism over the past century, including diverse perspectives on nuclear energy.
We need your research and creativity to explore and analyze themes that emerge from these collections!
Exploring personal narratives, finding connections, and considering change over time are at the heart of this URAP project.
Role: Undergraduates on this project will conduct digital archival research with Ph.D. historians and OHC staff; they will identify and analyze primary source stories and memories recorded in environment, resource, and energy-themed oral history interviews; they will explore historical contexts for these archived stories and memories; they will offer develop questions to spark further exploration and analysis; and they will draft conclusions based on their research. Throughout the process, URAP participants will learn about oral history methodology and other ways of conducting qualitative research while learning about the histories of resource extraction and environmental activism. URAP students will also draft blog posts about their semester of work.
Qualifications: URAP students should have an interest in history (particularly on environmental activism and resource extraction) and interest in narrative sources created through intersubjective interviews. Students should be able to conduct self-guided historical research; to maintain focus with detail and accuracy; to review audio/video materials and written transcripts in a timely and reliable fashion; to engage professionally with fellow URAP students and mentors; and to express themselves clearly and thoughtfully. Experience with Zoom, Microsoft Office, and the online suite of Google's Documents and Drive tools is necessary, and experience with audio/video editing software is a plus. Students should be willing to ask questions to ensure tasks are well understood and completed correctly. Importantly, students must have a willingness to think critically and creatively.
Research supervisor: Oral Historian of science, technology, and environment at The Bancroft Library, Roger Eardley-Pryor, PhD.
Hours: 3-5 hrs
Off-Campus Research Site: This position will be remote. Be where you want to be.
Related website: https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/libraries/bancroft-library/oral-history-center/projects/sc
Related website: https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/visit/bancroft/oral-history-center/projects/western-mining