Field Notes: Summer 2026

Director's Note

Dear SOHP Community,

As we reach the midpoint of 2026, I am excited to celebrate what we have accomplished together in the first half of the year and to herald the exciting opportunities on the horizon. Over the past six months, we have leaned into our mission of stewardship as an act of attention, care, curation, and amplification.

Throughout the spring, we partnered with the Carolina Brown Lung Association to collect and share the stories of the organization's staff as part of the Association's 50th anniversary celebration. We also established a new collaborative partnership with the Morehead-Cain Foundation to collect and co-curate oral histories of the first generation of Morehead-Cain Scholars at UNC, a project already underway in the capable hands of one of our Graduate Field Scholars.

Stewardship also means making space for the histories that get left out. This spring, we hosted two book talks from SOHP community members and UNC alumni whose work does exactly that. Dr. O. Jennifer Dixon-McKnight's new book, We Paved the Way: Black Women and the Charleston Hospital Workers' Campaign, focuses on the labor of Black women whose organizing reshaped a hospital and a city. Affrilachia: Testimonies, a collaboration between photographer Chris Aluka Berry, writer and oral historian Kelly Elaine Navies (a long-time friend of SOHP and a UNC alumna), and historian Maia A. Surdam, focuses on Black life and belonging in Appalachia.

Our Graduate Field Scholars spent the spring leading workshops for campus and community partners and shepherding their own oral history projects from ideation through ingestion into the Southern Historical Collection. We closed out this season by launching our first SOHP Art & Oral History Incubator — five days in which playwrights, poets, portrait artists, printmakers, theatre practitioners, and musicians engaged with our archive to discover new ways to bring those stories forward. The sections ahead tell each of these stories more fully.

From education and preservation to curation and amplification, we are proud of the work we have done together and excited for what awaits us in the coming academic year. Read on to learn more about our successes, graduate milestones, and the colleague stepping in to lead SOHP this fall as I step away for a research leave.

If SOHP has been part of your journey, please take a moment to add your name to our community archive — we would love to know where you are and what you have been doing. As always, thank you for being part of our cherished community.

All the best,RenéeRenée Alexander Craft
Director, Southern Oral History Program
Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Professor

Renée Alexander Craft, Director of the Southern Oral History Program

While Renée Is Away

Introducing Acting Director Dr. Melody Hunter-Pillion

Dr. Melody Hunter-Pillion, Acting Director

The SOHP is pleased to announce Melody Hunter-Pillion, Ph.D. as Acting Director for the Fall. An historian, journalist, and communications professional, Melody's academic research focuses on intergenerational narratives in African American and diasporic communities. She is no stranger to the SOHP.

As a former Field Scholar, she managed the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's LDF Recollection oral history project and has gone on to build an impressive record in public history, including curating exhibits for the North Carolina African American Heritage Commission and producing documentary history series for the North Carolina Museum of History.

She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from UNC Chapel Hill and brings extensive leadership experience spanning higher education, state government, and healthcare. We are delighted to welcome her back to the Southern Oral History Program.

Teach, Tend & Tell

Notes from our Undergraduate Internship Course (HIST 593)

HIST 593 students examining Carolina Brown Lung Association archival materials

This spring, students in the SOHP internship course partnered with the Carolina Brown Lung Association (CBLA) to document the stories of the organization's staff through oral history. Over the course of the semester, students developed foundational skills in oral history methodology and archival research, then put those skills to work — conducting and processing eleven oral histories with CBLA staff members.

The class also had the opportunity to work directly with Joseph "Chip" Hughes, who visited to share the history of the CBLA and guide students through the organization's archives. The semester culminated at SOHP's annual Spring Symposium in April, where students presented digital humanities projects drawing on their fieldwork and archival engagement.

These eleven oral histories will soon be ingested into the SOHP repository within the Southern Historical Collection at Wilson Library, where they will be freely and openly accessible to the public — ensuring that the voices and experiences of CBLA staff become a lasting part of the historical record.

Joseph Chip Hughes presenting Brown Lung Association history to HIST 593 students

Joseph "Chip" Hughes shares the history of the Carolina Brown Lung Association with HIST 593 students.

Kept & Carried

Graduate Field Scholar Projects

Kayla Corbin

This past semester, Field Scholar and recently minted PhD, Dr. Kayla Corbin had the pleasure of working on two projects close to her heart. As part of her role with the SOHP, she helped audit transcripts from interviews with Black Pioneers in UNC's history, focusing on the creation and leadership of the Institute of African American Research (IAAR) — work that deepened her sense of the SOHP's mission as stewards of voice and memory.

In that same spirit, Kayla served as project lead for the SOHP's co-sponsored event marking the 50th Anniversary of Women's and Gender Studies at UNC, drawing on oral histories from the Southern Historical Collection to bring the voices of WGST's founding women into the room — bridging younger generations with the memory of those who came before.

Institute of African American Research Oral History Project banner

Oral history interview being filmed for the Morehead-Cain Foundation project

Megan Foster

Field Scholar Megan Foster helped bring the SOHP's oral history partnership with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to a successful close this semester, ensuring that interviews and related materials were properly preserved and documented. She also helped launch a new collaboration with the Morehead-Cain Foundation at UNC Chapel Hill, working with foundation staff to begin planning an oral history initiative that will capture and preserve the experiences of scholars, alumni, and other members of the Morehead-Cain community.

For Megan, this semester underscored a truth central to the SOHP's mission: that meaningful oral history work is built on relationship, trust, and long-term collaboration.

Student presenting oral history work at the SOHP Spring Symposium

Ben Barber

As a teaching assistant for the SOHP's undergraduate internship seminar this past semester, Field Scholar Ben Barber supported students as they partnered with the Carolina Brown Lung Association to conduct oral histories with organizers and members who spent decades fighting against the hazardous mill conditions that caused brown lung disease.

The semester culminated at the SOHP Symposium on April 24th at the Love House, where students presented to an audience that included faculty, students, and former CBLA organizers. Beyond the classroom, Ben served as a panelist at the 2026 Organization of American Historians Annual Conference in Philadelphia and led an oral history workshop for high school students from Raleigh Charter High School.

Simiyha Garrison

Field Scholar Simiyha Garrison spent this past semester continuing her work on the SOHP Community Archive Project, building a database that documents and celebrates the impact of community members who have helped shape the field of oral history and the legacy of the SOHP — capturing professional roles, publications, projects, and community engagement across generations of collaborators and storytellers.

Simiyha also led workshops extending the SOHP's reach into the broader community, including a guest lecture for undergraduate students at NCCU participating in CLEOPATRA, an oral history initiative documenting the stories of Black women connected to the university, and an oral history workshop in collaboration with the Global Women's Narrative Project at UNC.

Heard & Held

Winter and Spring Speaker Series

Cover of The Secrets of Silence by Shannon Malone Gonzalez

Porch Talk · December 2025

Dr. Shannon Malone Gonzalez

Last December, the SOHP welcomed Dr. Shannon Malone Gonzalez for a Porch Talk on her debut monograph, The Secrets of Silence: The Everyday Policing of Black Women and Their Stories About Violence, moderated by SOHP Director Renée Alexander Craft. The conversation explored the stakes of silence, storytelling, and the everyday experiences of Black women navigating systems of policing and violence — a timely and vital addition to the SOHP's ongoing commitment to centering marginalized voices in the historical record.

Book Talk · March 2026

Affrilachia: Testimonies

In March, the SOHP hosted a public program centered on Affrilachia: Testimonies, a visual history by photographer Chris Aluka Berry, created in collaboration with oral historian, writer, and poet Kelly Navies and historian Maia A. Surdam. The event brought together photography, oral history, and historical interpretation to explore Black life, memory, and place in Appalachia — offering an intimate and layered portrait of Affrilachian communities and the histories that have too often gone undocumented.

SOHP Spring 2026 Symposium

Cover of We Paved the Way by O. Jennifer Dixon-McKnight

Opening Keynote · April 23

Dr. O. Jennifer Dixon-McKnight

The SOHP's annual symposium opened on April 23 with a keynote conversation between Dr. O. Jennifer Dixon-McKnight and SOHP Director Renée Alexander Craft. Dixon-McKnight discussed her award-winning book We Paved the Way: Black Women and the Charleston Hospital Workers' Campaign, which examines the 1969 strike led by predominantly Black women hospital workers in Charleston, South Carolina. The conversation illuminated the enduring power of oral history to recover histories of grassroots activism and lift up voices whose labor and leadership have too often been overlooked.

Student Presentations · April 24

The symposium continued with student presentations from the SOHP internship seminar, showcasing oral history work conducted in partnership with the Carolina Brown Lung Association. Students shared projects documenting the stories of labor, health, and organizing that have shaped the textile industry's impact across the South.

Project Threadways Symposium · April 23–25

The Project Threadways collaboration continued to generate momentum this spring, as Associate Director Phillip MacDonald and former SOHP interns Lilian Guglielmo and EJ Foster traveled to Florence, Alabama for the Project Threadways Symposium. Founded by Natalie Chanin of Alabama Chanin, Project Threadways documents, studies, and interprets history, community, and power through the lens of fashion and textiles.

Guglielmo and Foster, both alumni of the Fall 2025 internship cohort, presented "Weaving Stories: Oral History, Textiles, and Community." CSAS Director Marcie Cohen Ferris also presented at the symposium, reflecting the depth of the Center's investment in this growing collaboration.

Project Threadways Symposium panel discussion in Florence Alabama

Welcome

New Field Scholar for 2026–2027: Rebekah Barber

Rebekah Barber, incoming SOHP Field Scholar 2026-2027

The SOHP is delighted to welcome Rebekah Barber as a Field Scholar for the coming year. Rebekah is a second-year PhD student in the Department of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies at UNC, where her work sits at the intersection of race, place, and gender — with a particular focus on amplifying the stories of Black women from the South.

She brings to the role an impressive breadth of experience: before coming to UNC, she earned bachelor's degrees in English and History from North Carolina Central University and a master's in Public Policy from Duke University. Her career in journalism has taken her from the Institute for Southern Studies and its publication Facing South to The 19th* News, where she was an inaugural Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Fellow. We look forward to the perspective and passion she will bring to the SOHP community.

Congratulations

Dr. Kayla Corbin

The SOHP community is overjoyed to celebrate Dr. Kayla Corbin on the successful defense of her dissertation, "Carrying: Black Women, Misogynoir & The Mandate of Mothering," in the Department of Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her committee was chaired by Dr. Kumi Silva and included Dr. E. Chebrolu, Dr. Antonia Randolph (American Studies), Dr. Armond Towns (Africana Studies, Williams College), and Dr. Renée Alexander Craft.

This fall, Dr. Corbin will join the faculty as Adjunct Professor in both the Department of Communication Studies and the Department of Women's & Gender Studies at UNC Chapel Hill. We could not be prouder, and we cannot wait to see everything that comes next.

Book Talk · October 8

An Evening with Rachel Seidman

Cover of Our Stories Live On by Rachel Seidman

The Southern Oral History Program invites you to join us at the Love House for an evening with Rachel Seidman — former SOHP director and curator at the Smithsonian's American Women's History Museum — in conversation with SOHP Acting Director Melody Hunter-Pillion about her new book, Our Stories Live On: Creative Ways to Share Your Family History (Simon & Schuster).

Drawing on decades of experience as an oral historian and curator, Seidman offers readers a warm and practical guide to capturing the stories of family and loved ones. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event. We hope to see you there.

Mark & Meet · October 14–17, Portland OR

SOHP at the 2026 Oral History Association Conference

OHA 2026 Landscapes of Memory conference graphic Portland Oregon October 14-17

This October, SOHP heads to Portland, Oregon for the Oral History Association Annual Conference, where we will present two panels drawn from our most meaningful work this year.

"Breathing the Landscape: Listening to Brown Lung, Land, and Labor in the Textile South"

We will lead a listening session drawing on oral histories conducted this spring in partnership with the Carolina Brown Lung Association — bringing the voices of CBLA staff and organizers into conversation with broader questions about labor, health, and environmental justice in the textile South.

"Stewardship as Method: Activating Oral History Through Art in Shifting Landscapes"

We will present on the Art and Oral History Incubator, exploring what it means to invite artists into an oral history archive and to create new works in dialogue with existing recordings — and to treat stewardship not as an end point, but as a generative practice.

We look forward to representing this community on a national stage.

Tending Toward

SOHP Art & Oral History Season: What's Coming in 2026–2027

The 2026 SOHP Art and Oral History Incubator cohort gathered outside Love House

The 2026 Art & Oral History Incubator cohort at Love House.

The 2026 Art & Oral History Incubator set something in motion. Over the coming year, here is what that looks like:

Adair Carroll will create an original portrait in real time — drawn in direct response to an oral history narrator's voice — with SOHP documenting the process on video, pairing audio with art as it unfolds.
Howard Craft, with the support of SOHP Field Scholars, will lead students and artists in conducting oral histories at barbershops across Durham and Orange County, weaving the resulting stories into original dramatic readings and a photography exhibition.
Danita Mason-Hogans will bring Rebecca "Beck" Mason — a Black woman whose labor was woven into the earliest history of UNC but who was never named in it — back into focus through soundscape, visual installation, and performance at Love House.
Langden Ramseur will build a collaborative mixtape with students and community members, pairing oral histories with jazz, blues, and gospel to ask what it sounds like when Southern history speaks through music.
Cara Smelter will create a multimedia exhibition at the National Humanities Center and across Triangle galleries — drawing from SOHP's oral histories, printmaking, writing, and sound to explore Southern grief as something rooted, inherited, and shared.
Leah Woehr will create an immersive soundscape performance centering oral histories of Chinese adoptees of the South, weaving movement, song, and projected text into a live installation.

This work culminates in a nationally convened Art & Oral History Institute in Summer 2027 and a special issue of Southern Cultures dedicated to Art & Oral History. We welcome co-programmers, campus partners, and community collaborators at every stage.

To get involved, please reach out to Dr. Melody Hunter-Pillion, Acting Director, at melody@unc.edu or Phillip MacDonald, Associate Director, at ptmacdon@unc.edu.