Watzek’s Vietnamese Portland Collection to Become Podcast Series

The Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) has awarded Lewis & Clark a $10,000 grant to produce a series of podcasts using material from Watzek Library’s Vietnamese Portland: History, Memory, Community archive. This growing collection, being developed with the support of a separate LSTA grant, includes oral history interviews with members of Portland’s Vietnamese-American community and digital and physical documents from families and organizations (including photographs, diaries, scrapbooks and correspondence). Funding from the CIC’s “Humanities Research for the Public Good” program will support the work of two Lewis & Clark undergraduate students during the 2019-2020 academic year as they research, write, and produce five podcast episodes based on this collection. This CIC program is intended to help institutions demonstrate how the raw materials of humanities research can engage local communities. With this in mind, it is expected that the proposed podcasts will explore themes such as survival, migration, entrepreneurship, and the development of a community. The project will be done in collaboration with community organizations—and draw on recordings of conversations with civic leaders, business persons, matriarchs, retired veterans, health care workers, scholars, restaurateurs, and artists in order to deepen listeners’ understanding of Portland’s multicultural history. Beginning in fall 2019, students will be working under the guidance of Associate Professor of History and Chair of Asian Studies Susan Glosser and Special Collections Librarian E.J. Carter to research and develop the podcasts. During spring 2020, Director of Public Relations Roy Kaufmann will help the students edit, record, and disseminate the podcasts. Lewis & Clark’s Associate Vice President for Public Affairs and Communications Joe Becker will also be engaged in and support this project, which ultimately will promote access to Watzek’s Vietnamese Portland collection, while connecting Lewis & Clark students with the city and providing a mechanism through which they are able to give back to the community.