Merle Collins, Ph.D., University of Maryland, Department of English, will give a talk, “Ways of Recording Experience: Oral History, Creative Nonfiction and the Documentary," on Friday, April 3, 11:00am-12:30pm, at El Instituto, Ryan Building, Room 240. A light lunch will be served.
Professor Collins is an activist in Caribbean communities, starting Carivision Community Theatre and helping to restore the damaged library on the island of Grenada.
This year, Professor Collins is directing an oral history project in the Washington, DC area aiming to record the stories of individuals in the community, both Caribbean and Latin American. In “Recovering Oral Histories: Caribbean and Latin American Communities in the USA and Britain,” her students learned oral history techniques, using storytelling for recreation of community histories and analysis of critical work relating to the construction of oral histories.
In her talk, she will discuss her experiences using interdisciplinary methods and a variety of collaborative research strategies to record various "expiring" experiences in marginalized communities in the US and abroad.
For more information, contact: El Instituto at 860-486-5508