The Oral History Master’s (OHMA) Program recently announced Holly Werner-Thomas’ THE 40% PROJECT: An Oral History of Gun Violence in America & The Survivors: A Documentary Play. An excerpt from the announcement:

In this capstone, Holly Werner-Thomas demonstrates the potential of combining art, oral history, and activism to contribute to the critical public political discussions of our time. The centerpiece of her capstone is a work of documentary theater – The Survivors – which weaves together edited oral history transcripts to tell a broad and yet deep story of the often-invisible impacts of gun violence on Americans…Werner-Thomas does something innovative: she does not rely on the structure of the interview to structure the piece, nor does she rely on the body of a single performer to bind together disparate points of view. She puts the narrators directly in conversation with each other, using juxtaposition to create dialogue between people impacted by gang violence, suicide, domestic violence, and other crime. 

You can read the full announcement here, as well as learn about the award runner-up.

The Oral History Archive at Columbia is proud to host The 40% Project and heartily congratulates Holly on the award for this innovative work! We look forward to processing this collection and making it available in the near future.

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OHMA describes the award: The Jeffrey H. Brodsky Oral History Award recognizes an outstanding capstone/thesis by a student in the OHMA program.  Criteria for receiving the award includes the capstone/thesis making “an important contribution to knowledge and exemplify the rigor, creativity and ethical integrity we teach our students.”