Christine Muller - What Can Oral Histories Tell Us About September 11?

Christine Muller
PhD Student, Department of American Studies, University of Maryland
"What Can Oral Histories Tell Us About September 11?"

This curriculum unit seeks to cultivate within students a critical awareness of the production of September 11, 2001 as history. Specifically, this unit focuses on oral history as a historical approach that balances a storyteller's subjective perspective of a lived experience with fact-oriented documentation of the same occurrence. In this way, students come to appreciate how knowledge about an event as history, that over time can appear self-evident and inevitable, in fact is contingent, and continues to be contingent, upon the contributions of diverse participants, including the students themselves. To this end, students will read excerpts of the 9/11 Commission Report, which relies on both documentary and verbal reports for its historical record, as well as a selection of oral histories from witnesses and survivors of the September 11 attacks published in the popular press. Additionally, they will listen to a selection of audio files of September 11 oral histories from the Library of Congress archives and watch a video compilation of September 11 news coverage from an internet archive. Ultimately, the students will conduct small-scale oral history interviews with one another, and supplementary readings, guides, and writing assignments will foster analytical review of how an historical event such as September 11 comes to be known not only through its contemporaries' viewpoints, but through subsequent narratives - such as those the students produce - as well.

Learning Objectives

After completing this curriculum unit, students should be able to:

• Distinguish between the methodological assumptions and practices of oral history and those of other forms of historiography
• Assess how the relationship between the oral history interviewer and the interviewee affects the account their interaction generates
• Evaluate the implications of similarities among and differences between separate oral history accounts of the single event of September 11
• Situate within these considerations of the scope and limits of oral histories a critical analysis of what we can and cannot know through this form of historical production about September 11
• Situate within these considerations of the scope and limits of oral histories a critical analysis of the consequences that follow this kind of knowledge of September 11

Intended Audience

This curriculum unit has been developed with the following audiences in mind:

• Students at the secondary school and undergraduate levels.

Table of Contents

Curriculum Unit Description

Learning Objectives

Assignments, Middle and High School

Assignments, College and Above

Appendix 1: Engaging Critical Terms

Appendix 2: Lecture Guide

Appendix 3: Discussion Guide

Appendix 4: Audio Oral History Guide

Appendix 5: Viewing Guide

Appendix 6: In-Class Journal Guide

Appendix 7: Reading/Discussion Guide

Appendix 8: In-Class Exercise Guide

Appendix 9: First Essay Grading Rubric

Appendix 10: Second Essay Grading Rubric

Audio Files

Library of Congress September 11, 2001 Documentary Project Oral History

"Interview with Amanda Mummery, New York, New York, October 26, 2001"

"Interview with Nicholas Maiorca, Haymarket, Virginia, November 29, 2001"

"Interview with Louis Orozco, San Diego, California, November 25, 2001"

Video Files

"A Summary of News Coverage from September 11, 2001"

NBC (USA) - 0:00:00-0:02:48

The Today Show pre-events

CBS (USA) - 0:02:49-0:04:24

As they break into news of the impact into the North Tower

CNN (USA) - 0:04:25-0:06:24

As they cut into a commercial to go live from NYC to cover the North Tower

TV Azteca (Mexico) - 0:06:25-0:07:44

Coverage of the North Tower on the morning show "Hechos"

ABC (USA) - 0:07:45-0:09:14

The impact into the South Tower live

ABC (USA) - 0:09:15-0:10:31

Presidential statement from Florida

WUSA (CBS affiliate in Washington DC) - 0:10:32-0:12:37

Breaks into CBS network coverage to report on the Pentagon impact

WTTG (Fox affiliate in Washington DC) - 0:13:38-0:14:33

Coverage of the collapse of the South Tower

NBC (USA) - 0:14:34-0:15:31

Live coverage of the South Tower collapse

NTVi (Russia) - 0:15:32-0:17:14

A news bulletin relating to the collapse of the South Tower

CCTV4 (China) - 0:17:15-0:18:18

A news bulletin with both Tower collapses. Video is from CNN

CBC Newsworld (Canada) - 0:18:18-0:20:16

Live coverage of the collapse of the North Tower

CNN (USA) - 0:20:17-0:21:42

First video from the Pennsylvania crash

Iraqi Satellite Channel (Iraq) - 0:21:43-0:23:12

New program with information about the attacks in America. This was the second news item in their program - the first was news of an Iraqi shoot-down of an unmanned US aircraft

BBC World (UK) - 0:23:13-0:25:23

Summary of the day's events

NHK World (Japan) - 0:25:24-0:26:08

NYC coverage with very close South Tower shots

VOA Worldnet (USA) - 0:26:09-0:27:04

Summary of the day's events

Materials for this unit can be requested by emailing education@start.umd.edu.

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