Welcome to Hist 150, Emotional Histories: First Person Narrative Genres (Graphic Novels, Letters, Oral Histories, Testimonial Literature) and Social Change in the Contemporary World
This web-site is comprised of original oral history interviews carried out by students of Dr. McCleary’s Hist 150 and Unst 390 course, spring 2016 to 2023 as part of James Madison University’s general education program. All of the interviews are available in MP3 form and transcriptions.
The general theme of the interviews are about social change in the 20th and 21st centuries as depicted through themes such as the Cold War, gender, immigration, education, and the workplace. Students also analyze these interviews to discern patterns of social change in themes of their choosing.
This is a critical thinking class with an emphasis on personal narratives. We work together to “de-textbook” history in the college classroom. This means that we look for ways to appreciate the nuances and emotion of lived history from a personal experience rather than to be buried under an avalanche of names, dates, and ‘facts’ that someone else has decided are important.
We seek to understand the connection between an individual and the larger historical context of their life through interviews, reading memoirs and graphic novels, and telling our own stories about how our lives intersect with social change. We hope others will learn from these interviews from ‘everyday’ people who are doing work that sustains our society and inspires our learning community.
Accepting the decentering of the West globally, embracing multiculturalism, compels educators to focus attention on the issue of voice. Who speaks? Who listens? And why?
–bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress