Oral History Section Candidates 2025

This year, the Oral History Section seeks one (1) Vice Chair/Chair-Elect, for a three-year term, and two (2) Steering Committee members, each for a two-year term.

Vice Chair/Chair-Elect Candidates

We are still seeking candidates for this position. If you are interested in serving in this role, please send a bio and candidate statement to OHS section chair, Cyrana Dowell at cyrana.dowell@mtsu.edu.

Steering Committee Member Candidates

The following candidates are running for open positions.

Molly Copeland 

Molly Copeland (she/her) is the Manuscripts Archivist at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where she is responsible for the stewardship of materials concerning the history of Chattanooga, Hamilton County, and the broader Tennessee Valley region. Copeland received a BA in Art History from Oberlin College and a MLIS in Library Science and a MA in History from Simmons University. Previous to joining UTC in 2023, she worked as an Archives Assistant in the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections and for the Northeastern University Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project.

Candidate Statement 

I am excited to nominate myself to be a member of the Oral History Section Steering Committee. I have engaged with oral histories as a researcher, practitioner, and archivist, and I am eager to connect with my colleagues engaged in the same work and to participate in the governance and initiatives of this section. As a historian, I have used oral histories to explore questions about collective memory and neighborhood identity in the wake of urban renewal projects. I was first exposed to the collection of oral histories that became the focus of my History Masters thesis as an Archives Assistant assigned to clean up the transcriptions of the recordings. Both experiences as a transcriber and a researcher continue to inform my work today designing oral history projects for undergraduate courses and with the description and preservation of oral history collections. I have a great interest in the whole life-cycle of oral history projects but am especially interested in the maintenance of and education around best practices. 

As a member of the Oral History Section Steering Committee, I would bring my skills at committee work and carrying projects through to completion. At present, I am completing work as the PI on a digitization grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission distributed by the Tennessee Historical Records Advisory Board. In my short time at UTC, I have already engaged in impactful service as a faculty member and to the profession. As a member of the UTC Library faculty, I was part of a small ad hoc committee to overhaul our Bylaws, which we passed with unanimous approval from our colleagues in March 2025. A member of the Society of Tennessee Archivists, I was appointed as Chair of the Nominating Committee in 2024, and in that role, I am now implementing a more transparent and democratic nomination process for our Executive Committee positions. In the broader campus community at UTC, I am an active member of our chapter of United Campus Workers - CWA Local 3865 and was elected Vice Chair in December 2025. I would love to have a structured way to be involved with the Oral History Section, and I believe being a member of the Steering Committee aligns with my interests, strengths, and my job duties as a faculty member. Thank you for your consideration!

Yolanda Hester 

Yolanda Hester is an oral historian and a public historian. She is currently the project

director of the Arthur Ashe Oral History Project at Arthur Ashe Legacy at UCLA, where

she oversees an extensive oral history project of the tennis champion. To date over 100

interviews have been recorded and archived. In the project, she is responsible for the

overall direction of the project, conducting interviews, outreach and dissemination of

the materials as well as managing one other team member. She is also responsible for

some of the collection management as Ashe milestones make the material of great

interests to organization such as Wimbledon, the BBC, Black Spring Global and the

International Tennis hall of Fame. Other projects include the Los Angeles Department of

Cultural Affairs, Local Projects, the Urban Civil Rights Museum, The Center for Oral

History Research at UCLA, Forest History Society and UCLA’s Bunche Centre’s Archiving

the Age of Mass Incarceration project. She has been featured in the PBS TV show Lost LA

and the Netflix feature, Black Barbie: A Documentary. Publications: The Legacy of

Shindana Toys: Black Play and Black Power, American Journal of Play, Winter 2022,

Community and Commerce: Oral Histories of Black Business in Los Angeles, The Public

Historian, fall 2024 and as guest editor, the La Muneca Negra edition of Contours at the

University of Minnesota. She is co-creator of the Black Doll Symposium at Duke

University.

Candidate statement

I would be honored to be a part of the oral history steering committee. I have over 20

years in oral/public history work and my projects have often straddled the needs of both

oral history and the archives. What excites me about this opportunity is the possibility

to both contribute and learn. Of late my work has been situated in demystifying the

methods and processes of history production/archiving for community use and finding

creatives ways to engage archival materials. As an independent oral historian, I often

have to think creatively and entrepreneurially in how I approach my projects. I believe

this perspective could be valuable to the committee.. At the same time I’m interested in

learning from a network of like-minded professionals. I am well aware that components

of these types of roles involve advocacy and service and I hope to be of great assistance.

Thank you for considering my nomination.