Imagining Lives: Preserving & Interpreting Personal Stories with Jane Kamensky, Harry S. Truman Professor of American Civilization, Brandeis University and Jill Lepore, David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History, Harvard University, authors of Blindspot (2008)
College of the Holy Cross, Worcester

Public history organizations increasingly use personal narrative to reach their audiences. Massachusetts personal history materials are held, in large part, in town and historical archives across the Commonwealth. Also, it is becoming increasingly clear that much of the personal history of at least the second half of the twentieth century will be gathered and preserved through interviews and oral histories. It seems extremely fitting to organize a conference around creating and using personal narrative in various and fruitful ways. With that this conference is taking on the issue of “translation”: bringing academic history and professional methods to the public. Local historical organizations collect and own materials that form the backbone of personal history. Among them are archival resources such as letters, diaries, journals, oral histories, financial papers, photographs and negatives, birth and death records, local maps, and genealogical research. Houses, barns, tools, household items, clothing, personal items, and toys are among the main material culture objects owned by local historical organizations. Sessions will engage the personal narrative from all sorts of angles: preservation of the materials(including preserving, digitizing, transcribing, and editing oral history tapes); exhibiting lives in context; programming (lives, plays, impersonations, lectures, games); doing oral history (it appears this is the major way in which personal history of the 20th century will be recorded in the absence of letters and diaries); thematic or community story gathering; houses and their inhabitants/the “personal” narrative of a house. (program)
(Watch keynote address Heads or Tales? History and the Art of Story with Jane Kamensky and Jill Lepore