New York City COVID-19 Oral History, Narrative and Memory Archive

Focus

New York City’s experience of the pandemic.

 History

It came out of an ongoing collaboration between sociologists and oral historian at INCITE, and grew from our 9/11 oral history work. We began with existing resources and grew through rapid response funding from the NSF.

Collection

For this project, we are conducting video interviews with each narrator two times over the course of twelve months. The voices from these interviews will be enriched by written diaries chronicling daily life during the pandemic and survey data tracking the demography of our participants and their social lives. We plan to return for a third round of interviews in a year or two.

Form of Collection

All digital. Interviews on Zoom.

 Emphasis

 We are interviewing two hundred New Yorkers, including doctors, nurses, home health aides, funerary workers, doulas, parents, homeless people, organizers, artists, immigrants, teachers, other essential workers, public officials, and everyday New Yorkers of all kinds

 Time Period

 Narrators’ lives, continuing into the present.

 Public Access

We expect it will be available through the Center for Oral History Research at Columbia in late 2021.

 Contact Person

Name: Amy Starecheski

Email: aas39@columbia.edu

Telephone number: 212 851 4395

Website: https://incite.columbia.edu/covid19-oral-history-project