Collectivizing Language Justice, a project of Circular for Hudson Valley Farm Hub. The project documents how and where distinct groups that practice language justice in the form of cooperatives, collectives, hybrid groups, and others have formed, how these decisions were made, and what the results have been. Click here to learn more.

For Hudson Valley Farm Hub

A workshop designed for staff of the Elliotsville Foundation, Inc. This workshop offered participants basic knowledge of the ethics and practice of oral history as a methodology. Participants learned standards for ethically carrying out oral history projects in collaboration with historically marginalized communities. Through dialogue, reflection, and interactive activities, participants left the workshop with strategies for applying these principles in their own work.

For Elliotsville Foundation, Inc.

The artist collaboration, Parlante Visual, invited Circular, to conduct six oral history interviews with members of Make the Road for use in the participatory creation of the project Caminando Juntos/To Walk Together. The interviews explored the themes of community, dignity, strength and safety through the personal experiences of members of Make the Road. Circular compiled quotes and themes that emerged through the interviews to share with the artists. Parlante Visual will use the materials created from the interviews as guidance in the creation of participatory workshops that will culminate in a semi-permanent visual installation in late 2023.

For Parlante Visual x Make the Road New York

A workshop for faculty at Montclair State University.

Are you tired of trying to convince your institution that they shouldn’t be producing work for an English-only audience? Have you had to fight tooth and nail for a budget for interpretation and translation for your project or to hire linguistically competent transcribers? Join us for a discussion on the intersections of racial equity, language justice and accessibility within institutions that carry out oral history work.

Facilitators Fernanda Espinosa and Allison Corbett will guide a conversation about shifting organizational cultures to decenter cultural, linguistic, and epistemic hegemonies. Voicing a commitment to such work is different than committing to the practices, planning, and budgets required to do so. Too often oral history workers advocating for changes that promote greater accessibility, racial equity and language justice find themselves to be the lone voice in their institutions or in discussions with funders. In this caucus, join others committed to decentering dominant cultures to share your frustrations, experiences, and success stories. Let’s brainstorm together about what it takes to create change within our field and the institutions that dominate it.

With the Oral History Association Annual Meeting

As oral historians, our source of inquiry and creativity is the embodied language through which the personal becomes historical. If language surrounds, contains, and articulates all of the work of oral history, why not design our projects with very intentional attention towards it and its use? How would project design be if we de-center dominant linguistic standards and, instead, center the language needs of our participants? In this workshop we’ll discuss what Language Access and Justice could look like as actions and values inseparable from the work of oral history. We will pay particular attention to designing projects that create access for and welcome narrators who are most comfortable using Spanish in English-dominated spaces.

For the Anti-Oppression and Oral History Series, Columbia University’s Oral History MA Program.