Karen A. Frenkel

My oral history experience dates back to 9/11, when I repurposed my interviewing skills as a journalist. I conducted interviews for three projects at Columbia University’s Oral History Research Center:

• 9/11 Narrative and Memory Project
• International Psychoanalytic Institute for Research and Training’s oral history
• Washington Press Club Foundation’s oral history project, Women in Journalism.

You can find at list of my 9/11 interviews of members of the media who covered the discaster, and one computer scientist, in the Columbia University Library Collection here.

In 2005 I interviewed White House correspondent Helen Thomas in Washington, DC for the Washington Women Press Organization. At that time she was 86. There were two audio tapes and one video tape of our conversation. I don't know what happened to them.

In 2003 I conducted three two-hour oral history sessions with Geneva Overholser, former editor, The DeMoines Register, who became known for choosing to print the name of a rape victim, with her permission, so that readers could absorb the personal, violent nature of the crime.

Overholser is now Director of the Annenberg School of Journalism, USC.

Between 2005 and 2007, I also conducted 18 interviews for The Pew Trusts Biomedical Sciences Oral History and Archives Project while it was under the auspices of UCLA and then  the Chemical Heritage Foundatoin. These interviews are now available through the Science Hisory Institute Museeum and Library on this web page.

Here is the list of scientists I interviewed:

John D. Altman, Emory Vaccine Center, Yerkes Regional Primate Center, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States

Michael J. Berry II, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, United States
Edwin R. Chapman, Medical School of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, United States
Kathleen L. Collins, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States
Julia P. Cooper, London Research Institute, London, England, United Kingdom
Mark D. Fleming, Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA, United States
Mark W. Grinstaff, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Roy M. Long, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States
Kun Ping Lu, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Matthew L. Meyerson, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts, United States; and Broad Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Dimitar B. Nikolov, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York, New York, United States
John Sondek, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States
Hao Wu, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York City, NY, United States
Phillip Zamore, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA, United States