November 10, 2006

Oral History Under Review

By JENNIFER HOWARD

Historians who work on events that occurred within living memory bridle at having to submit their projects to institutional review boards

An oral historian sits down with a survivor of Hurricane Katrina to hear a first-person account of the storm. Is their encounter a conversation about a historical event, or is that historian performing research on a human subject?

The scholar will have one answer. It may not jibe with the verdict of his or her college's institutional review