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| J. Howard Miller, We Can Do It (1943) |
Studs Terkel's multifaceted life produced an equally rich and varied
legacy of research materials. After graduating from University of
Chicago's Law School in 1934, Terkel pursued acting and appeared on
stage, in radio, and in the movies. He was a playwright, a radio news
commentator, a sportscaster, and a film narrator, and worked as a jazz
columnist, a disc jockey, and a music festival host. He even served
briefly as a civil service employee but is best known as a radio network
personality and as a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of books. His award
winning books are based on his extensive conversations with Americans
from all walks of life that chronicle the profound and often tumultuous
changes in our nation during the twentieth century. On
"The Studs Terkel Program," which was heard on Chicago's fine arts
radio station WFMT from 1952 to 1997, Terkel interviewed Chicagoans and
national and international figures who helped shape the past century.
The program included guests who were politicians, writers, activists,
labor organizers, performing artists, and architects among others.
Terkel was remarkable in the depth of his personal knowledge of the
diverse subjects explored on his program and his ability to get others
to talk about themselves and what they do best. (from
Studs Terkel: Conversations with America)
Reading:
Studs Terkel,
Working:People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (excerpts) PDF
Today's Reading is in Our Class Packet
Study Questions:
1. What similarities do you see between the first two paragraphs of Terkel's introduction and the theorists whom we have read in the first five weeks of the class?
2.
Working is an oral history, meaning that rather than compose a narrative account of what happened, it records the thoughts and expressions of individual people on a particular topic. What are the advantages of this form of history over those forms of history you are probably more accustomed to reading in either high school or college history courses? What strengths does it have when compared to the philosophy that we've read?
3. All of the excerpts we are reading from
Working come from Terkel's women correspondents. What commonalities can you find in these oral histories that might relate to the speakers' genders?
