2016 Theses Master's

Being Real: The Struggle for Authenticity in the Historian-Narrator Exchange

Alvarez, Mario

“Being Real: The Struggle for Authenticity in the Historian-Narrator Exchange” explores issues of authenticity, authority, and morality in oral history practice. Inspired by an oral history project with sharply different interpretative directions, this thesis examines these concepts—which are more often than not in tension with one another—using that project as a framework.

Keywords: activism, authority, shared authority, authenticity, Columbia, history, ethics, morality, journalism, biography