The Classical Association of the Middle West and South

An oral history of CAMWS

CAMWSCorps

CAMWSCorps is an oral history project modeled on National Public Radio's StoryCorps. Since the fall of 2012, interviews of long-time CAMWS members have been conducted during the annual meetings of CAMWS and the biennial meetings of CAMWS-Southern Section.

The CAMWSCorps mark: the CAMWS temple with the word CORPS, inside a ring reading The Classical Association of the Middle West and South

The interviews

In each interview a graduate or undergraduate student poses a series of questions; the interviewees are invited to reflect on the role CAMWS has played in their lives, to share some of their favorite memories, and to comment on how CAMWS and the Classics profession as a whole have evolved over the years.

These interviews are intended to be part of the history of the organization and are preserved in the CAMWS Archives. They are created and maintained by the CAMWS History Committee.

While these interviews are not generally available to the public, occasionally individual interviews will be made available as CAMWSCorps Podcasts.

CAMWSCorps needs editors

Under the guidance of the History Committee, we have conducted 106 interviews and thereby compiled an oral history of our association, a unique living legacy of testimony that will be of great value to future historians of the field and the association.

Our immediate need is for volunteers who are willing to edit the interviews which have been electronically transcribed to a 90% degree of accuracy. (The program has trouble detecting “CAMWS”, for instance: one finds “cameras,” “campus,” and even "Kanye West.”).

For further information, please contact the CAMWS historian, who serves as chair of this committee, at historian@camws.org.