Ancestors: Who We Are and Where We Come From
Listen to the interview with Dr. Hertzel:
About this interview
Ancestors: Who We Are and Where We Come From is the latest work by SWOSU historian Dr. David Hertzel. Over the course of eight chapters Professor Hertzel explores the varied meanings of ancestry through interviews with thirty-four people. Included in the interviewees are a mathematician, a Choctaw archivist, a rabbi, a psychiatrist, a Roman Catholic priest, a biologist, Native American elders and leaders, Buddhists, as well as scholars of almost every stripe. They are, in the words of the author "… people of prominence from a diversity of cultural and intellectual communities."
Dr. Hertzel, as a historian, weaves an impressive multidisciplinary approach to the voices in his book. At its heart the book is tolerant, expansive and relentlessly curious about the beliefs — religious, spiritual, and psychological — found in the interviewees' relationships to their ancestors. The subjects of the book are quite open, sometimes painfully so, about their views and their relations to those who have passed, both immediate and distant.
If the book deals with loss, it also deals with hope. If it deals with intangible religious mysteries, it is also grounded by an honest humor. If it deals with diversity, it also touches on a number of commonalities. Ancestors: Who We Are and Where We Come From is history in its most important guise: it is a history about ourselves and our place in the world.
Credits
- Topic: Ancestors: Who We Are and Where We Come From (ISBN: 978-1-5381-0436-1)
- Author(s)/Performer(s): David Hertzel
- Interviewee: David Hertzel
- Interviewer: Frederic Murray
- Recording Engineer: Prabhjyot Saluja
- Length: 00:49:55 (hh:mm:ss)
- Recorded: July 31, 2017