The Tabb Center offers public oral history workshops in collaboration with local curators, archivists, and representatives of Baltimore Speaks, a network of oral historians. Attendees gain a working knowledge of oral history: a field of study and a method of recording, preserving, and interpreting people’s experiences of the past through the prism of the present.

Contact Joseph Plaster at jplaste1@jhu.edu if you would like to receive information about future workshops.

Past Workshops

Documenting Trans Oral History: Lessons from the Tretter Project

“Documenting Trans Oral History,” an oral history workshop and public talk in December 2022, featured Andrea Jenkins and Myrl Beamfrom the Minneapolis-based Tretter Transgender Oral History Project, a program committed to collecting, preserving, and making available oral histories of gender transgression, broadly understood through a trans framework.

Press coverage: Rowan Liu, “Tabb Center Hosts Speakers to Present on Intricacies of Transgender Oral History,” December 10, 2022

Building Power Through Documenting Trans Oral Histories

Saturday, December 3, 2022
6:00pm – 7:30pm
Bird in Hand Café & Bookstore

Andrea Jenkins and Myrl Beam shared lessons from their work with the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project, reflecting on the power of storytelling to help build movements for justice that enable trans lives to flourish.

View the event info

Doing Trans Oral History: Ethics, Politics, and Community-Building

Saturday, December 3, 2022
2:00pm – 4:00pm
Impact Hub Baltimore

This public workshop, led by Andrea Jenkins and Myrl Beam from the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project, was a practical introduction to the process of doing oral history.

View the event info

Doing Oral History in Baltimore

“Doing Oral History in Baltimore,” a series of three workshops in April 2022, supported individuals and institutions in recording, archiving, and interpreting under-documented histories in Baltimore, with a focus on the city’s Black history.

Press coverage: Jamie Crow, “Retelling Baltimore History through Community Narratives,” The Hub, May 6, 2022.