Studs Terkel Radio Archive

FAIN: MN-253341-17

Window to the World Communications, Inc. (Chicago, IL 60625-4698)
Tony Macaluso (Project Director: June 2016 to October 2022)

Production of an interpretive website organizing the Studs Terkel archive along with accompanying public programming and curriculum materials.

The Studs Terkel Radio Archive will utilize extensive humanities scholarship to enable and encourage widespread digital access of the 5,600 interviews and radio programs Studs Terkel recorded between 1952 and 1997 on WFMT. Known for his omnivorous interests in the humanities, sciences, and social movements, his work serves as a remarkable audio history of the 20th century. The collection features conversations with luminaries such as Martin Luther King, Simone de Beauvoir, Bob Dylan, James Baldwin, Margaret Mead, Toni Morrison, Carl Sagan, Louis Armstrong and Cesar Chavez. Terkel also hosted conversations with thousands of average working people commenting on their own experiences living through significant social movements and cultural changes. Support from the NEH would allow us to make this archive accessible, search-able, and engaging, and to build public programs that promote its use to a wide audience.