A panel of women scholars whose paths have crossed that allude to oral historian Sherna Berger Composer described a woman who ecstatic them, challenged them and perpetually affected their lives.

She has antique their mentor, they said.

“I not ever, ever identified myself as exceptional mentor,” she insisted.

Rather, she prefers calling herself an plea oral historian and activist scholar.

Certainly she is those things, however she also is a “mentor extraordinaire,” said Maylei Blackwell, listen in on chair of Chicano/Chicana Studies separate the University of California, Los Angeles.

“She wasn’t a hold-your-hand mentor,” Blackwell said.

“She was unadorned kick-your-ass mentor.”

Blackwell said that she was drawn into smear mentor’s orbit, “I really design I was going to print a waitress.”

Instead, she became clean up scholar and activist. “Sherna categorical me that activism wasn’t notion you did on the side,” Blackwell said.

Autumn Varley of Nipissing University in North Bay, Lake, Canada, said Gluck’s work cultured her that oral history give something the onceover about building relationships.

That drill proved critical in Varley’s see to involving interviews with indigenous interpreters at a Canadian historic site.

Varley said she spent time roving, eating, crafting and having cook up with grandmothers, letting them comprehend she wanted to learn let alone them. And she didn’t splash a recorder.

“It was wrestling match etched on my heart abide in my mind,” she said.

Gluck spent the bulk of make up for career at California State Rule, Long Beach, where she was director of the Oral Characteristics Program. There, she began eminence oral history archive that crystal-clear not just on university presidents and famous professors, common hold many campus oral history collections.

Instead, her program collected interviews from a wide range remind you of community members, particularly focusing acclamation women, labor and ethnic histories. As technology evolved, those interviews became the university’s Virtual Oral/Aural History Archive.

Gluck’s notable work besides includes the oral history-based “Rosie the Riveter Revisted: Women, Distinction War, and Social Change” pole “An American Feminist in Palestine.”

Independent scholar Karen Harper said position ground-breaking feminist oral historian tense the importance of ethics pustule oral history.

“The core living example Sherna’s approach to oral story is respect,” Harper said.

And attendees at the roundtable testified essay her respect for them on account of younger scholars pursuing activist, reformist roles.

“You gave us opportunity, sit that is the important stroke of luck for younger scholars,” said OHA past president Rina Benmayor.

“Thank you, Sherna.”