A one-day symposium on the Federal Writers’ Project, a cultural policy initiative implemented by the United States government during the New Deal era, will be held in Japan on the 30th of June!
The event will feature Professor Emeritus Alessandro Portelli, an internationally renowned oral historian and scholar of American literature, alongside Professor Emeritus Yoshinobu Ota, a cultural anthropologist whose publications (in Japanese) have engaged with the Federal Writers’ Project, Zora Neale Hurston, and Franz Boas.
The symposium will consider both the potential the Federal Writers’ Project may have embodied in the 1930s and the limitations it simultaneously entailed, with the aim of critically illuminating these dimensions through interdisciplinary dialogue between oral history and cultural anthropology.
Symposium Schedule (JST) — 30 June
14:00–14:15 – Opening Remarks: Maiko Mine
14:15–14:45 – Professor Emeritus Yoshinobu Ota
‘To Keep the Idea of Transcription Open: Ethnographic Sensibilities from Boas to Hurston’
14:45–15:15 – Professor Emeritus Alessandro Portelli
‘The Potential of Oral History: Reconsidering the Federal Writers’ Project and The Death of Luigi Trastulli’
15:15–15:30 – Break
15:30–16:30 – Dialogue and Q&A: Moderator Maiko Mine will facilitate a conversation between the two speakers. Questions from both online and in-person participants will be welcome and addressed.
To get the Zoom link, please reserve in advance by clicking the URL or scanning the QR code on the poster!
