NYC Covid-19 Oral History, Narrative, and Memory Project - Incite at Columbia University
NYC Covid-19 Oral History, Narrative, and Memory Project
- Led by Columbia Center for Oral History Research
- Team
- Funding National Science Foundation Board of Trustees of the American Assembly
- Contact covid19archive@gmail.com
New York City was the early epicenter of this pandemic in the United States because of its international connections and the local density of its social life. Our archive focuses on New York—a city of neighborhoods—to illuminate and document the social structure of the pandemic.
We’ve noticed that in this crisis people’s perceptions and understandings change daily, sometimes hourly. This is why we started interviewing as soon as we could, in March 2020. Our work builds on our experience developing the September 11, 2001 Oral History Narrative and Memory Project, and combines sociology and oral history to create a rich, composite picture of the struggle against Covid-19 as it evolved over the years that followed.
For this project, we conducted video interviews with narrators as many as three times over the course of 18 months. The voices from these interviews were enriched by written diaries chronicling daily life during the pandemic and survey data helping us understand more about our participants and their social lives.
“The archive bulges with revelations, anecdotes, anxieties, blind spots, big ideas and weird ideas.”
This crisis highlighted structural fault-lines in our society as well as the strength and resilience of our communities, even as our society transforms in ways we do not yet understand. That’s why it was so important for those navigating the post-COVID future to hear the voices of those who lived through this period. Researchers, health workers and advocates, historians, artists, and policymakers will learn from listening to and watching New Yorkers talk about how we made it through this extended crisis.
FAQ
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If you want to learn more about doing oral history in this period, we’ve compiled some resources.
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The NYC Covid-19 Oral History, Narrative, and Memory Project collection will be publicly available through the Oral History Archives at Columbia in late 2024.
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Artists, researchers, and others who would like to use the archive for non-commercial purposes can request permission from the research team, subject to rules and procedures.
Pleas submit a description of proposed use (up to 1000 words) to covid19archive@gmail.com.
Related Works
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open website
The Brooklyn Rail, "Common Ground | A People’s History of the Pandemic in NYC", March 18, 2021
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open website
Denise Milstein, Barbara Adams, "Improvisation, Design, and Sociality during the Pandemic: A Conversation with Denise Milstein from the New York City COVID-19 Oral History, Narrative and Memory Archive", COHNMA, January 29, 2021
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open website
Denise Milstein, Ryan Hagen, "Listening to COVID-19: Oral Histories of New York in Pandemic ", Heyman Center for the Humanities, Columbia University, September 23, 2020
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open website
Lilah Raptopoulos, "How will history remember 2020?", Financial Times, August 26, 2020
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open website
Gillian O'Neill, "In Trinity and Columbia, Twin Archivist Projects Map a Pandemic in Real Time", The University Times, June 16, 2020
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open website
, "¿Cómo volvemos a la normalidad después de esta pandemia?", Telemundo, May 13, 2020
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open website
Christine Chung, "NYC Cultural Institutions Preserve Pandemic Memories in Real Time", The City , May 6, 2020
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