Daniel Clarkson Fisher is a Toronto-based writer and educator whose most recent work is the Chinese Jamaican Oral History Project (CJOHP.org), a digital storytelling initiative inspired by his partner Stephanie Lyn and her family. He holds a Master of Fine Arts in Documentary Media from Ryerson University, and is currently a contract lecturer in that program.WorldCat: @danielclarksonfisher
Pocket: @danielclarksonfisher
Litsy: @danielclarksonfisher
Author Archives: Daniel Clarkson Fisher
Notes on September 11: An Oral History (2002) by Dean E. Murphy
Ahead of reading Garrett M. Graff’s newly-released The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 (2019), I decided to take a look at another oral history of the tragedy — one I’d not read before: then New … Continue reading
My Post about the Chinese Jamaican Oral History Project for the Oral History Review Blog
I am incredibly honored and excited to be able to share the news that I have written a blog post about my M.F.A. thesis, the Chinese Jamaican Oral History Project, at the invitation of the Oral History Review — “the … Continue reading
Notes on Notes from the Field (2019) by Anna Deavere Smith
I started blogging about oral history as a mode within the documentary arts not just to “teach” about this kind of work, but also to educate myself; though I’m already actively working in this mode, there’s still a lot that … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes
Tagged Anchor Books, Anna Deavere Smith, documentary theatre, Eve Ensler, Fires in the Mirror, Hal Holbrook, HBO, Jade Budowski, John Lewis, Moisés Kaufman, Notes from the Field, On the Road: A Search for American Character, Oral History, Robin Soans, school-to-prison pipeline, Spalding Gray, Talking to Terrorists, Taos Proctor, Tectonic Theater Project, The Anna Deavere Smith Pipeline Project, The Laramie Project, The Vagina Monologues, Twilight: Los Angeles 1992, verbatim theatre, Verne Gay
On the Passing of Branko Lustig
Last week, Branko Lustig, the double-Academy Award-winning producer of Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993) and Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000), passed away. A Holocaust survivor, he was also a driving force behind the awe-inspiring USC Shoah Foundation, whose mission is “to … Continue reading
Why I Signed the Writers’ Petition to the Toronto Public Library
One day, early in the first year of my MFA program, I was in middle of working on a scholarship application when I got a call at home from one of the professors writing a letter of reference for me. … Continue reading
Notes on The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II (1985) by Svetlana Alexievich
Last week, Sara Danius, the first woman to serve as Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy — the “independent cultural institution” which has, since 1901, been responsible for choosing each year’s laureate for the Nobel Prize in Literature — passed … Continue reading
Posted in Book Notes
Tagged documentary arts, John Freeman, Larissa Volokhonsky, Laura Esther Wolfson, literary nonfiction, literary oral history, Masha Gessen, Nobel Prize in Literature, Oral History, Richard Pevear, Sara Danius, Svetlana Alexievich, Swedish Academy, The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II, Timothy Snyder
Notes on “The Good War”: An Oral History of World War II (1984) by Studs Terkel
“The ordinary person feels not only as good a being as I am; rather he feels somewhat superior. The average American has an indigenous intelligence, a native wit. It’s only a question of piquing that intelligence.” – Studs Terkel As … Continue reading
“Visual Media in Syria”
I’ve written a review of Donatella Della Ratta’s exceptional new book Shooting a Revolution: Visual Media and Warfare in Syria for H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online’s H-Socialisms network. You can read the whole thing right here.
Finding My Thing
“I often reflect upon what it means to identify as an oral historian. What makes each one of us an oral historian…? Are we oral historians only if the interviews we conduct are transcribed, indexed and deposited into a traditional … Continue reading
