The Impact of Listening and Being Heard: Oral History, Archives, & Advocacy (Spring 2019)

The Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY, in collaboration with The Laundromat Project (The LP) are hosting “The Impact of Listening and Being Heard: Oral History, Archives, & Advocacy,” an 8-week interdisciplinary workshop in Spring 2019. The workshop consists of artists and the CUNY communityBridget Bartolini, Brittany Brock, Aspen Christian, Crystal Des-Ogugua, Yvette Ramirez, Rebecca M Swann-Jackson, Cievel Xicohtencatl, and uses a lens of radical empathy to deepen our oral history practice. The workshop will culminate in a collaboratively-designed public event on May 23rd, 2019: “Listening with Radical Empathy: A Listening Party.” The workshop is led by Sady Sullivan at the Graduate Center, CUNY and is part of The City Amplified: Oral Histories and Radical Archiving research team, generously supported by the Mellon Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research.

The Impact of Listening and Being Heard: Oral History, Archives, & Advocacy:

With our eyes on the prize of a more equitable and peaceful future, we are focusing on oral history as a tool for exploring the dynamic relationships of identity, multiplicity of voice, embodied knowledge, belonging, and becoming. The workshop reflects on ethical oral history praxis, self-care, care for our narrators/interviewees, and the role that sharing life histories plays in caring for our future. We will strengthen our intuitive listening skills through shared experiences such as Deep Listening (both Buddhist and in the spirit of Pauline Oliveros), movement and sound therapy exercises, and guest visits from sound artist Jules Gimbrone and sound artist/healer Grace Osborne. This workshop is inspired by adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy: “There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have. Find it.”

Listening with Radical Empathy: A Listening Party! (Thur, May 23 6:00 PM)

As a culmination of this course, we will collaborate on a public event “Listening with Radical Empathy: A Listening Party” that will engage a broad community of oral history practitioners in news ways of thinking about care and collaboration in their work. We’d like to share the results of our co-investigating with all who are interested in deep listening, care, and collaboration. Click here to RSVP and for more information about this listening party.

This workshop is sponsored by The City Amplified: Oral Histories and Radical Archiving research team as part of the Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research from the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY; and the Laundromat Project (The LP).

The Impact of Listening and Being Heard: Oral History, Archives, & Advocacy (Spring 2019)