Oral History Commons^™

Farnsworth, Susan, Larisa Filippov

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Susan Farnsworth is a 75 year old lesbian who has lived in Maine for over 50 years. She currently resides in Hallowell, ME, but has lived all over Maine and other places in New England. Farnsworth is an attorney and has her own law practice where she helps a variety of clients with their legal problems. She realized she was a lesbian while she was in law school during her marriage to a man. Farnsworth attended Bates College for her undergraduate degree before going to the University of Maine School of Law in Portland. The multiple political organizations she has …

Blanchard, Mike, Micaiah Ward

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Mike Blanchard is a 60 year old gay man from Westbrook Maine. He has struggled as an alcoholic due to repressing his queer identity, but has been sober for 33 years (since 1989). Through addiction recovery he was able to come out as gay in 1992. After years of struggling with alcohol and rough relationships, Mike met his husband at Blackstones in Portland, and describes their relationship as, “nothing I ever chased and everything I could have hoped for.” Mike worked for a long time in the field of recreation, but left after feeling as though he could not be …

Wanderer, Nancy, Mary Wallace

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Nancy Wanderer is a professor at the University of Maine School of Law and was also the first Director of the Legal Writing Program at Maine Law. She received a B.A from Wellesley College, and M.A. from George Washington University, and a J.D. from University of Maine School of Law. Nancy Wanderer has dedicated her life to women’s rights and protecting and fighting for the rights of other minorities as well. Since growing up in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, Wanderer has always been drawn to education and Academia.

She was married to her ex-husband during her Junior year at Wellesley in …

Gifford, Dan, Erin Schott, Hailey Kamenides

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Dan Gifford is a gay white man who grew up in Arkansas, and eventually moved to Maine with his partner. Dan is now an employee at the Portland Museum of Art, where he enjoys his job and being close to art. Dan has always known he was gay, yet to some in Arkansas this was viewed in a negative light or simply swept under the rug. Dan explains that the first time he visited Maine he felt “home”, and enjoys that he can be his true authentic self here, without the scrutiny that he experienced in the South. Dan also …

Chann, Marpheen, Kendall Garland, Meghan Horner

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Marpheen Chann is a Cambodian, Asian-American, gay man living in Portland, Maine. He was born in California to an immigrant mother and later moved to Maine, then adopted by a white, Evangelical family. He spent his childhood in the church and would later attend Valley Forge Christian College. Then later transferring to USM to earn a Bachelor’s in Political Science and later attended Maine Law. Chann participates in advocacy work with organizations, such as the Equality Community Center and is the president of Khmer Maine. He currently works for the Good Shepard Food Bank as their Community Impact Manager.

Hine, Rook, Ty Bolduc

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Rook Hine is a 47-year-old transfemme non-binary person from Connecticut. In this interview, Hine describe their life experiences, from challenges in her household, zir benefits and complications within education, and finding their identity as ze grew up. They discuss masking, performing arts as an outlet for gender expression, activism in college and beyond. Ze also mentions developing their non-binary identity, use of the term metagender, polyamory, and internalized transphobia, as well as adventures around the country - attending Sarah Lawrence College in New York, spending time in New Orleans as a tarot card reader, stripper, and phone sex operator after …

Bridges, Steven, Ethan Bent

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Steven Bridges is a 52 year old gay male living in Portland Maine. He grew up in a small town in Central Maine before moving to Portland as a young adult. Steven has a long history of activism and volunteer work. During the AIDS epidemic, he participated in extensive volunteer work for those living with AIDS and provided them with rides, meals, and whatever care they needed. He also also participated in the Marriage equality campaign and alongside his husband Michael Snell, became the first gay married couple in Portland Maine in 2012. Steven’s record as an activist, professional photographer, …

Labbe, Roland, Wendy Chapkis Phd

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Roland Labbe discusses growing up in Maine in Millinocket, Winterport, and Lewiston, before moving to Worcester, MA at 14 with an older lover. He also talks about his time as a young man in New York City; that made him realize that Portland needed a gay bar which he opened in 1967: “Roland’s Tavern” on Forest Ave. He shares stories about challenges he faced in opening Portland’s first gay bar, including licensing struggles with the city of Portland and hostility from police and some of the public. He discusses his tremendously supportive family, with his mother and siblings often working …

Macnaughton, Daniel, Wendy Chapkis Phd

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

No abstract provided.

David Doellinger Interview 2022, Dawn Mcnamee, Ella Tenido, Amanda Larios, Anya Kramer, Natalie Montalvo, Kimberly Jensen

Oral Histories of Western Oregon University

In this interview, David Doellinger describes the WOU Fallout Shelter (which was dismantled in 2022) and discusses the importance of the history of the Cold War.

A physical exhibit detailing the history of WOU's Fallout Shelter was created by History 404l students during Fall 2022 and captured in a PowerPoint presentation. The presentation is also included on this page.

We4: Leisure Quotes, Lance Gibbs Phd

We Exist Series 4: Quotes

Welcome to the fourth exhibit in the series of “We Exist”. In this section we have selected quotes that represent and explain how Maine’s Black residents’ create the processes behind their engagement in particular leisure activities. The quotes also highlight the particular types of leisure activities that Maine’s Black residents suggest that they are involved in. The quotes are taken from transcripts of the oral history project "'Home Is Where I Make It': African American Community and Activism in Greater Portland, Maine”. The interview subjects are all native to Maine or are longtime residents of Maine. The original intent of …

The Famine Foods Co-Op / Bluff Country Co-Op Oral History Project, Michael William Doyle

Famine Foods Co-op / Bluff Country Co-op Oral History Project

The Famine Foods Co-op / Bluff Country Co-op Oral History Project collects the oral narratives of people associated with the member owned, cooperatively run natural foods grocery store in Winona, Minnesota. The Project was launched in 2022 by Michael William Doyle, a founding member of the Co-op and a retired History professor, in commemoration of the Co-op’s 50^th anniversary year. It is endorsed by the Co-op’s board of directors and sponsored by Winona State University and the Winona County Historical Society.

This enterprise began as a buying club in spring 1972, inspired by the example of North Country Co-op …

Critique Beyond Judgment: Exploring Testimony And Truth In The Classroom, Sean Sidky

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This essay offers a set of strategies for utilizing the words of survivors and of witnesses to genocide in the classroom. Including the voices of survivors and victims in our classroom conversations about genocide, its impact, representation, and the possibilities for its prevention is crucial to an ethical and wholistic pedagogy of genocide. Discussion of these events in the classroom often finds us confronting questions from students about truth, historical accuracy, authenticity, and authority. Addressing such questions requires careful framing that takes into account student assumptions and cultural discourses about memory and witnessing, as we work with students to develop …

Gatumba Massacre, Background Essay, Christopher Davey, Ezra Schrader, Fidele Sebahizi, Jean Paul Iranzi

Background

On August 13th 2004, 166 people were killed and 106 were wounded at the UN’s Gatumba refugee camp in Burundi. Nearly all the victims were members of the Banyamulenge community, a Congolese Tutsi ethnic group who were deliberately targeted in the attack. The massacre was carried out by the Forces Nationales pour la Liberation (FNL), a Hutu supremacist rebel group fighting in Burundi’s civil war. Understanding the Gatumba Massacre requires understanding what forced those Banyamulenge refugees to flee their homes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and why the FNL targeted them. This background essay addresses the context …

Rethinking Ethical Questions In Life-History Interview Research, Anne Rothe

The Qualitative Report

Having interviewed Germans who emigrated to Israel and, in most cases, converted to Judaism, I experienced a paralyzing sense of ethical conflict when I began analyzing the first order discourse my participants and I had co-constructed to transform it into the second-order discourse of research publications. So, I set out to rethink the ethics of life-history interview research. My quest into our ethical responsibilities began with rule-based deontological and consequentialist ethics and the guidelines in the social sciences they inform. It led me to reconsider such core notions as informed consent, privacy, and risk-benefit analysis. I came to realize that …

Author Interview With Novelist Esther Laforce, Esther Laforce

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

Novelist's Corner:

Author Interview with novelist Esther Laforce, author of: In the Early Days of the Anthropocene (Aux premiers temps de l’Anthropocène). Ottawa, CA: Leméac Editeur, 2018

“Filipinos In California, Community, And Identity”: A Personal Inquiry, Sam T. Mcclintock

The Forum: Journal of History

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

The Forum: Journal of History

No abstract provided.

"Texas, "Our" Texas: My Family's Deep Roots In The Lone Star State", Karen Kossie-Chernyshev

Department of History, Geography and General Studies

In this essay, Karen Kossie-Chernyshev traces her family's connections to Texas history, from Mexican Texas history to the present.

(Re)Constructing Homescapes: “Archaeological Remote Sensing” And Ground-Truthing Of The Walker Place Homestead At Spirit Hill Farm, Tate County, Mississippi, Gabriel Griffin

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on an early nineteenth-century homestead known as the Walker Place homestead at Spirit Hill Farm in northern Mississippi. The goal of this thesis is to conduct a ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and shovel test survey to explore how changing landscapes simultaneously (re)create and destroy senses of place or Homescapes. Homescapes have received little attention in the field of archaeology and have not been applied to Euro-American Homescapes. I apply this theoretical construct in a novel way as a venture to further develop an avenue in archaeology to be collaborative and understand the past in a way that accurately …