Stephanie Pinkas ’24 is the first to describe herself as an introvert—a quality that made her interview-based independent study particularly remarkable. Her senior year, the LGBTQ+ history elective co-taught by History Chair Louis Barassi and Gender and Sexuality Specialist Talya Sokoll was canceled due to under-enrollment. Pinkas was determined to find another opportunity to learn about LGBTQ+ issues and history. Ms. Sokoll suggested an independent research project, and offered to serve as the advisor. Their knowledge of and connections with Boston’s LGBTQ+ community were integral to Pinkas’ culminating collection of oral history segments documenting LGBTQ+ voices. Ultimately, Pinkas contributed the interviews to the Nobles Archives and The History Project, a nonprofit preserving New England’s LGBTQ+ history.
When Pinkas weighed ways to present her research, one ideal format emerged. “I love oral history as a medium,” she shares. “There’s something different about hearing someone in their own voice and in their own manner of speaking saying, ‘This is my story. These are my memories, and this is my past, and this is where I am today because of that.’ It’s wildly different than reading something they said—there’s something really powerful about the act of listening.”
Pinkas is grateful for the community support of her project. “Once I started doing more research, I met with Mr. Barassi, who talked to me about the structure and the analytical side of conducting an interview. And then, I met with Ms. [Heidi] Charles, our archivist. She helped make sure that the Nobles Archives release forms for oral history were up to date and accurate and answered other broad questions.” Pinkas interviewed four faculty members: Assistant Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Aneesa Sen, history faculty member Jenny Carlson-Pietraszek, Dean of Faculty Maura Sullivan, and former computer science faculty member Alycia Scott-Hiser. Ms. Sokoll also helped Pinkas curate a list of Boston-area interviewees who had cultivated welcoming and inclusive LGBTQ+ spaces: a local cafe founder, a DJ, and a bookstore owner.
Pinkas conducted pre-research and refined her purpose from January to March, guided by her teachers and resources from Columbia University’s Center for Oral History. “I started to standardize my process so that I could best analyze the data and I wasn’t asking wildly different questions,” she says. Mr. Barassi taught her the importance of process documentation and conducting interviews as consistently as possible—still, they ranged from 25–80 minutes. “He described the process as a social science, but too often, we drop the science part of it. In physics or biology research, we talk about control factors; these were my control factors,” Pinkas says.
Interviewing was both exhilarating and nerve-wracking for Pinkas. Overcoming her shyness, she appreciated the unpredictable arcs of each conversation. “Did I go in with the same questions? Yes. Did I get different answers every time? Absolutely.” she says.
While Pinkas used an online transcription tool, she learned, “A lot of minutia goes into transcribing oral history correctly because the way we speak is not the way we write. I was learning how to correctly annotate and edit to accurately reflect the audio file to the best of my ability. After I finished editing and combing the audio file and the transcription, I sent it to my narrators for final approval.” Only then did she donate the files to the archives.
During her culminating presentation to faculty and peers on May 9, 2024, Pinkas revealed her favorite interview question: “What advice do you have for young people and young queer people today?” Interviewees echoed, “Being oneself is being able to speak your truth and to have the people around you support what was said.” Pinkas closed by saying, “I learned that listening rather than just hearing is genuinely valuable: We learn from each other when we take the opportunity to connect.”