Search our finding aids online for additional oral histories.

Collection Identifier: 10058
This collection explores the experiences and perspectives of international students who are currently attending or have attended Pennsylvania State University. It supports the effort of the University Archives to document Penn State student experiences, particularly those of traditionally underrepresented communities in our university's historical record. It is comprised of 26 oral histories from 2019 to the present. Each oral history has an accompanying
transcript.

The Penn State Black Alumni Oral History project consists of sixteen oral history recordings and transcripts featuring thirteen African American alumni who attended Penn State University between 1968-1973. One oral history recording is a group interview. The oral histories were conducted by Maia Hill (PSU 2020). The oral histories include discussions related to interviewees experiences growing up, attending Penn State, and involvement in social and political activities on campus. The oral history interviews were conducted via Zoom and generated video recordings.

Collection Identifier: 10132
This collection contains oral history interviews conducted with eight past or present members of the Penn State LGBTQIA+ community, including alumni, students, and faculty members. The interviews were completed over the course of six months by Cora Butcher-Spellman, the Malloy Graduate Assistant in the University Archives during the 2022- 2023 academic year.

Collection Identifier: 00084
Bernard Asbell was an associate professor of English at the Pennsylvania State University teaching nonfiction writing from 1984 until his retirement in 1992. He was the author of twelve books, most notably The Pill: A Biography of the Drug That Changed the World (1995) and Paterno: By the Book (1991). This collection of papers from Bernard Asbell documents his work as an author and includes manuscripts, notes, information files and audiotapes.

Collection Identifier: 02907
Jack Michael Rabin, (1945-2006), assistant professor at Auburn University in Montgomery, Alabama, during the 1970s, and author of more than 30 books, founded the Center for the Study of Civil Liberties and Civil Rights in 1974 to collect primary source, civil rights materials. The Jack Rabin Collection on Alabama Civil Rights and Southern Activists consists of unique primary source records documenting the civil rights movement including records of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) (1955-1974); photographs, surveillance tapes, oral histories, and video recordings of key civil rights leaders and events.

Collection Identifier: 01684
This collection consists of transcribed interviews; release forms and audio recordings; newsclippings; photographs and correspondence with prominent labor leaders and various union members, including the United Steelworkers of America (USWA). The USWA supported an oral history project beginning in the mid-1960s to preserve a record of its history. Alice Hoffman, faculty with Penn State Labor Studies Department, conducted many of these interviews and expanded the project to document the labor movement in Pennsylvania.

Collection Identifier: 01881
Alice M. Hoffman was labor archivist and associate professor of labor studies at King of Prussia, Penn State in the 1970s. She supervised and conducted numerous oral history interviews with labor leaders, served as an officer of the Oral History Association and Pennsylvania Labor History Society, and joined Bryn Mawr College after retiring from Penn State.

Collection Identifier: 01877
The collection consists of 86 interviews with miners and their families about their experience in the hard coal industry surrounding Hazleton (Pa.).

Collection Identifier: 00520
Alan Perry is Assistant Professor of Italian at Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. In 2000 and 2005 he assigned students to conduct an oral history interview with an Italian American. This collection includes reports about and recordings of oral history interviews conducted by students enrolled in Dr. Alan Perry's courses at the Pennsylvania State University and Gettysburg College, Pennsylvania.

Collection Identifier: 00455
Sociologist John A. Hostetler was the leading authority on the Amish in the second half of the twentieth century and served as the expert witness in the Supreme Court case Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972). This collection documents the life and work of John A. Hostetler and contains original field research, recordings, publications, teaching materials, and clothing, as well as extensive reference material on the Anabaptists, especially the Amish and Hutterites.

Collection Identifier: 00064
In 1988, the Penn State Alumni Association conducted oral history interviews with former African-American students and faculty about their experiences at Penn State. This collection contains 122 audio recordings with transcripts, plus correspondence, notes, newspaper clippings, and article drafts of a 3-part series on African Americans at Penn State.