Welcome to the Hampshire College COVID19 Oral History Archives, a project by the students in the First Year Seminar, Pandemics (Fall semester, 2020).

Pandemics: The Course

Co-taught by Hampshire College Professors John Castorino (biology),  Becky Miller (ethnography/oral history/music), Will Ryan (journalism/writing), and Jim Wald (history), the course used a transdisciplinary approach to examine, from multiple perspectives (historical, social, cultural, and scientific), how humans have understood and reacted to infectious disease across cultures and centuries. A central goal of the Seminar was to recognize and work with the fact that we are experiencing an historic moment given the centrality of the COVID19 pandemic.  The Seminar and this Archive aim to help all participants — interviewers, interviewees, students, faculty, and staff — make sense of the  COVID19 pandemic that we are living through and as we seek to reconstruct our lives and society.

Hampshire College COVID19 Oral History Archive

The Archive consists of a series of oral histories conducted by each of the students in the Pandemics Seminar. Each interview is intentionally short — 20 to 30 minutes — and focuses on one or more aspects of people’s lives since the onset of COVID19 in March, 2020.  The interviews cover many topics, including how people have experienced the disease itself and how the pandemic has affected the lives of a broad range of workers. Others focus on the impact of the pandemic on the daily lives of seniors, students, and families. Medical professionals and first responders speak to the challenges and unique stresses that they now routinely encounter in a working day. Artists and musicians offer insight into artistic practice and creative expression during COVID19. Some interviews provide international points of view of the pandemic while others focus on how young adults navigate love and relationships given travel restrictions and quarantine. Taken together, the Archive documents and records the diverse perspectives of a broad range of people from across the United States and internationally as they experience life during a global pandemic.

The oral histories are presented in audio format, having been recorded using Zoom technology.  Each oral history is accompanied by a photograph of the interviewee and a transcription of the interview completed by each student. In addition, students wrote short biographies of themselves and of their interviewees and crafted statements that offer their reflections on the interview process and what they learned from this project. That these interviews could not be conducted in person (given concerns of COVID19) and, instead, made use of Zoom, is a sign of the times and our reliance on technology in order to record, document, and facilitate communication between individuals and across communities.

Thanks To … 

We are in awe of the students in the First Year Seminar, Pandemics, given their excellent and diligent work at all stages of conducting and processing their interviews. We thank and are extremely grateful to the interviewees who took the time to share what are often very personal experiences and observations about their lives, losses, and hopes during a global pandemic.

Many thanks to Rachel Beckwith, Director of the Library, for administrative support and advice; to Jessica C. Neal, Hampshire College’s Archivist, for her guidance; to Luke Gannon for additional proofreading; and to Hampshire College’s IT staff — Andrew Bangert and Gabrielle Richard-Harrington — for technical advice and help with making this Archive accessible.

Becky Miller, Director, Hampshire College COVID19 Oral History Archive

Mohammad Abdullah Kawish,  Archive Designer/Developer and Seminar Teaching Assistant

Eike Sisson, Archive Co-Designer/Seminar Teaching Assistant

For further information, email: rmiller@hampshire.edu

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