He was called an oral historian, but I think of Studs Terkel as a documentarian — someone who devoted his career to documenting the lives of ordinary human experience. I thought his book on the Great Depression was his best work, and the human stories in it moved me profoundly.
Now he’s dead, at age 96. Obit at the Monitor. If there is an afterlife, I have no doubt that Studs Terkel is even now planning how to document the experiences of ordinary dead people.
Yes, documentarian is a much better term. Oral histories are systematic gatherings of information, useful, but often with research agendas that guide the tellers’ tales; documentarians are much better at letting a story emerge naturally. And by “naturally” I mean they get out of the way and listen actively, asking questions that help the teller tell their *own* tale.