Students Create a "Portrait of L-A
College Community"
L-A College students Mary Kunhardt
of Brunswick, left, and Ismail Ahmed of Lewiston, right, are
pictured here in front of the exhibit of a oral history and
documentary photography class project they participated in.
January 2004
Using the tools of cultural anthropology, folklore, and documentary
photography, students at USM's Lewiston-Auburn College recently
created a "portrait" of their college community
that was exhibited at the college.
The students who worked on the project were enrolled in a
course titled "Oral History and Documentary Photography"
with instructor Mark Silber, Ph.D., cultural anthropologist
and author of several oral history and photo-documentary books,
including Rural Maine,The Family Album, Racing Stock, Sumner
200, & Where is Rumford?
Working as a team, class members had to select a representative
sample of people who have an association with the college,
(students, faculty, staff, alumni) conduct, edit, and transcribe
interviews, and take photographs of documentary quality. As
Dr. Silber noted in his syllabus "Creating a portrait
of a community necessitates that students have some theoretical
background in several fields - history, anthropology, and
photography . . . it also necessitates that students have
some real, practical skills" (recording, transcribing,
how to use a camera and other equipment).
Students began their efforts by defining who really made
up the LAC community. They made an enormous diagram of the
many categories of people who comprise the community. Then
came the challenge of choosing whom to interview, and each
student had to pick three people to interview.
While most of the students found the interview process to
be more involved and time-consuming then they had anticipated,
transcribing them was for some the most daunting part of the
project. Transcriptions ranged from five to 31 pages. The
editing process followed, which required each interview to
be condensed into 500 words or fewer. Because an oral history
is different from from a formal paper, students had to refrain
from correcting spoken language idiosyncrasies to retain the
personal qualities of their interviewees.
Cheryl Donahue of Bowdoinham found this project to be very
educational. "It really made us think of what community
really is - especially the LAC community. Everyone has a different
perspective as an individual and where you are in relation
to the whole. We came up with quite a collage - and one that
will continue to grow."
The project can be viewed on the college's website at usm.maine.edu/lac/oralhistory/home.html.
This course will be offered again with
Dr. Silber during the Summer Session on Mondays and Wednesdays,
1:30 - 3:00 p.m., July 7 - August 18. There are no academic
prerequisites, although "infectious enthusiasm and abundant
willingness to work hard in a team setting are desirable."
For more information, please contact Silber at mark.silber@maine.edu.
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