Arthur Smith – The Digital Past Course Blog

Final Blog Post

This past semester, in this history class, I have attempted to learn about the history of the Great Depression era as well as some of the digital tools used to capture some of that historical knowledge. Coming in with a certain amount of knowledge for the early 1900’s, I expected most of this class to be learning about the IT aspect but there was plenty to learn about the era, like the WPA and New Deal, that I did not expect. I was, personally, pleasantly surprised by the amount of knowledge obtained from this course.

This exhibit felt like a culmination of all the tools we had learned throughout the semester. I chose the timeline and glitching tools initially because they were, for me, the most useful tools of conveying the information we learned this semester. The timeline was great for laying down background information on the Great Depression era by detailing the major events and including the progression of unemployment as well. It allowed me to take the information from the American Yawp chapter on the Great Depression and present it in a way that conveys the important events of the Great Depression. The chapter states multiple important events such as the stock market crash, the Dust Bowl, and FDR’s New Deal. ¹ The glitched image was my favorite skill assignment this semester as it surprised me as to how influential it can be. It feels like an abstract painting where you can take away different meanings from it based on how you look at it. As Kramer said in the glitching images reading,’Glitching was an unlikely candidate for historical inquiry’. ²I used an old exhibit from earlier in the semester that I thought conveyed the attitude of the Great Depression as people worked to get back on their feet. The last exhibit for my project took more thought as I eventually chose to use a poster from the WPA collection. I thought the WPA collections hold so much information and images like posters that I could find something pertaining to employment. They have collections on ex-slave narratives and folklore as well as work related posters. ³ I chose a work poster that had a confidence boosting message to it because it felt like it conveyed the idea that finding new jobs was important for the times but that the morale of people and the country was important as well.

I learned plenty about the Federal Projects in the WPA through the various readings this semester. The preface from the Bindas reading offered the most information on the Federal Arts Projects. I was most surprised to learn how much money was actually allocated to these projects that I had not heard of before. FDR gave over 27 million dollars to these projects. ⁴

I’m a firm believer in ‘those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it’ so I believe history always has a significant place in the present day decisions. I think if we were to experience problems like those from the Great Depression then funding the arts’ projects could be a viable answer. Going forward, I am definitely more aware of myself as a digital citizen especially after the class with the fake pirate professor. I know what it takes to be a contributing part of the digital world and feel prepared to do so in the future.

Final Exhibit:

http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/exhibits/show/finalarthursmith

Blog 7

These guidebooks were vital to westward bound travelers as there was little other method of knowing the exact routes or ares that one would travel through. There is no luxury of GPS or tourist guides like we have today which exemplifies the importance of these early forms of automobile guides. These WPA guides for regions of the US cover multiple cities on multiple routes while detailing the regions and cities along such route. Schaffer’s book on these guides details how the guides went through multiple reworkings in order to provide the best detailed tour guide of these regions as possible. The wording and structure of the guides seem to make it targeted toward more wealthy people as tourism was not a big industry during this time period. ¹

I learned much about the northern areas of Texas by doing this project. The guide provides details on many of the cities and towns that the routes pass through which give a good feel and scope of the area. These maps can tell us a lot about the history of the areas they cover as well as the rise of tourism in the US. These maps also give us an insight to the racial inequalities of the time as well. When making the project map, I noticed that many of the cited cited racial historical events such as native american lands and white expansion into such lands which shows just some of the racial tensions at the time. After comparing my map to the The Green Book one it revealed even more racial inequalities. The path in the American Guide Series was anything but ideal for black travelers. The Green Book path shows that the nearest hotel for colored people to the destination was literally across two state lines. Sarah Bond’s article on mapping racism also shows the same inequalities. She covered how the spatial mapping of racism at the time shows an extra layer to the treatment that these people felt. It also details the multiple kinds of maps that scholars have been working to show these inequalities. ² . https://uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/496d63689e291ecc46a4a31be0418a47/texas-guide/index.html

Blog 8

Archives such as the Special Collections Research Center offer scholars chances to engage with the materials and information that they focus on. It provides a place for those documents and unique pieces of history to be preserved and used for historical pieces later. Preserving these pieces of history and storing them so that they may be called upon again is why archives are extremely important. In an interview, archivist Elvia Arroyo-Ramirez stated that record creation, keeping, obstruction, or misrepresentation are all acts of identity and power. This is why she is proud to do the work of preserving the voices of the people who created those works of art. ¹ Archivists preserve and record these works of art that often give voices to those who often go unheard. These special collections allow the public to hear from these people in unique and specific ways that most historical information doesn’t allow for.

Archivists must decide which materials to be digitized and this decision stems from the condition of the piece of work or art, ability to be scanned and uploaded, space for data to be stored, and importance of the work. After taking all these into consideration, they must decide if it is worth being digitized. Digitizing these works does allow for more accessibility as we are in a world that revolves around technology and being able to access information form anywhere, but there is something about experiencing works in person especially art that viewing on a screen just cant compare to. That digital information however, does allow for the voices of those artists to reach multitudes of people.

The Federal Theater Project had a deeper impact on the United States than I had originally thought. We can see from the introduction of Peter Grough’s book on the New Deal and Federal Theater Project that music was often the only thing some of these people knew and fostering that and giving a channel for them to grow that exposed them to new ideals and skill that changed their life. ² The project gave many people jobs as music teachers as well as giving people music programs to participate in and uplift their lives. Many people cited the music projects in the west as the reasons for pulling themselves out of their slumps and giving them purpose. The true importance of the Federal Music Project was lost on me and these readings help me to realize that.

Blog 6

My historical question was “How did unemployment affect the people and writers of America during the Great Depression?”. This question came to me because I thought of the economic struggles that people faced during the Great Depression and then wondered about how it affected those people both socially and within their families. I had assumed that the families of America struggled to make ends meet and this forced them have dreary and downtrodden lives. I had also assumed that the writers of America would turn the pen and paper to deal with their struggles and would result in many writings about such struggles. As stated in the American Yawp chapter on the Great Depression, many families lost their jobs and subsequently their incomes with forced them into places such as ‘Hoovervilles’. ¹ I selected my sources by looking for text that related to money or unemployment. I searched for the terms; money, unemployment, struggles, jobs, and family.

I found the Voyant Tool to be slightly confusing and overwhelming as it takes a large number of files and words and visualizes them in many different ways. It took a little bit to understand what I was looking at. The Voyant website states that the tools are meant to portray text in new visualizing ways that help a reader look at the text differently. I believe in the end it did help me with that. ² I found the visualizations of the more commonly used words in the texts like the cirrus and links tools, which I have attached below as my two visualizations, to be the most useful in understanding what the text was telling me. They showed how the interviews had a common theme throughout with topics like their struggles and how life changed. It showed that all these people were affected by the Great Depression. I fumbled around with the other tools present but I struggled to find any significant meaning from those which is why I chose the ones I did.

Uploading the corpus showed me that unemployment did affect families and writers in their wallets, but it also had significant impact on their social lives and mental health. These were no topics I considered when first constructing my historical question. Pairing the findings help me paint a larger picture of the effect of the Great Depression on the American people, not just with what little ideas I had constructed before the close reading.

I concluded that my historical question was narrow in that it didn’t take into account the other problems that faced people and specifically writers during the Great Depression. I also concluded that distant reading helps with taking a large number of texts and analyzing them across the board and understanding them better.

Blog post 5

Creating this timeline of Fountain Hughes life has shown me an insight to the life of a slave both before and after the civil war. This interview allows Fountain to present in is own words his own experience. From this interview we learned about the day to day activities and hardships in the life of a slave, specifically the monetary struggles. Fountain recanted about how a slave couldn’t spend money if they were under 21 because it was assumes that it was stolen money. Most of Fountain’s memories were from after the Civil War ended. He also recanted about how his hardships getting good work after the war as many freed slaves were unable to support themselves or their families. ¹

The two timeline layers show how Fountain’s life interacted or was affected by the historical milestones of the time. We can tell that they line up from the death of Fountain’s father as he died during the civil war which was noted in the timeline. We can also see that Fountain moves to Baltimore for work and this had to have happened after the civil war as he was not free until after then. Both the end of the war and Fountain’s move are documented in the timeline.

I was surprised that more questions weren’t asked about Fountain’s father’s death. It was briefly mentioned and then was glossed over. I thought that this would an impactful point in his life and definitely be something he made a large note of in his life story.

This interview provides a first person look into the life of a former slave that any other account cant provide. Historical documentation lack the first hand accounts that the se interview provide. Lauren Tillton described these interviews as ‘a portrait of America’. She also stated that these life histories are vital to the cultural and historical knowledge of America.² Obviously, these interviews do come with limitations. The interviewees are quite old and don’t have the best of memories. This could allow for some information to either be lost or remembered incorrectly. These interviews only confirmed and added on to my ideas of how slave and ex-slave life was like.

Listening to the voices proved to be a little difficult as the audio wasn’t the best and the accents and dialect made it challenging to understand all the time. The transcribed version was much easier to understand and was my main reference when making the timeline. This interview tells us how even after the civil war, the recently freed slaves felt anything but free. Thrust into the world with no guidance or help they struggled to stay afloat as the world was against them. The hardships and struggles of their life is exemplified in Fountain’s testimony.

https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=1CaH7YwR4bWF8UJR9m49d17x_OZQ4a9xw1ye_C0u7ieM&font=Default&lang=en&initial_zoom=2&height=650

Blog Post 4

Algorithms are sets of rules in data that are often used today but these data sets are not free from unfair use or biased use. Cathy O’neil simply defined algorithms as ‘opinions embedded in math’. She states that these algorithms are viewed as objective and unbiased because its math and numbers and those are free from bias but the way algorithms are built allows for those mathematicians and data set builders to implement their own idea of success into the algorithms.¹ Because the definition of success is different for every person each algorithm can come up with different results. These algorithms in modern day use allow for inherently racist and sexist ideals to be prevalent in modern media. Search engines, like Google, in particular have been one of the most problematic in having these racist or sexist algorithms as stated in Noble’s book, Algorithms of Oppression.² The search results for black girls and other minority women come up with results that both objectify them and have a very sexist point of view. This is something that Google’s search algorithm allows for in mass media.

Feminism in the 1930’s was one of the better things about that decade. In a time where the Great Depression struck most people very hard, feminism, coming of the heels of the success of the women’s suffrage movement, progressed forward. The monetary struggles of the 1930’s pushed women to get jobs and provide monetary support for their families which was very rare until this point. This got women out of the house and gave them more freedom socially.

WPA era activists and modern activists share a common goal of pushing for equality for everyone across the board. They both utilize the power of media to get their message out. Granted, modern activists have the luxury of the internet and have easier access to more people and this can aid their movement but WPA era activists had the same intent and utilized their own skills and resources. Algorithm critics are part of that modern activist movement as they are pointing out the biases in these algorithms that most people do not recognize and calling for that change to create a better and more unbiased future.

Blog Post 3

When I began searching for an image, I was intent on finding something that showed the harshness of the Great Depression on people much like the famous Migrant Mother photograph from the 1930’s. The image I chose had the opposite kind of intent as that photo. The photograph I chose showed how some of these art programs helped people escape the harshness of the Great Depression and give some relief to those in need. This image specifically caught my eye because it was a young child and the effect of the Great Depression on the children specifically is not something I would normally think about, I would normally think about the effect on adults or families as a whole.

With this image, I’m asking questions like “How did the children of the Great Depression deal with the stress of the times?”. I think that this image in particular shines a light on the positives of the arts programs and how they impacted people’s attitudes. The monetary impacts of the Great Depression sent people into a state of panic or great sadness and these kind of programs had a significant impact on mood and morale especially for the youth. ¹

I’ll admit that I don’t see the purpose of the glitched images as much as the next person but this process definitely helped me see the potential in it. The article by Kramer helped me see some of the potential applications for glitching an image but it wasn’t until glitching my own image that it started to click. The article even states glitching as ‘an unlikely candidate for historical inquiry’. ² At first my glitched image made no sense to me and didn’t help me see the image in a different way at all until about the third time when it blacked out and distorted most of the image except for the child’s face. The face is what drew me to the image and the glitched image puts a larger emphasis on the intensity of that face.

These methods force us to look at these images in different ways that we wouldn’t have originally. Putting emphasis on certain aspects or blocking out the background can shine a light on a whole new meaning of an image. The glitching in particular helps with the blocking out of the less important parts of images and focuses the viewers attention to certain aspects and parts of an image.

I don’t think these methods helped me answer any questions as much as they sparked my interest for a new topic or raised different questions. This image in particular forced me to think about the effect of the Great Depression on the children adn how they coped rather than focusing on the adults.

Links: http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/items/show/196

http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/exhibits/show/arthur-smith–a-young-boy-name/image-annotation

Blog Post 2

I found Tony’s presentation to be very interesting and informative. He shared his experience on text searching and how that plays into digital history. I, myself, have used text searching in places like google to gather information whether for a research project or for my own curiosity. Tony presented options for text searching through the George Mason library that can help expand the information gathered through text searching. This will help broaden the amount of information I am exposed to.
Text searching has greatly specified the information that I search for. It allows me to search for specific information without having to comb through lots of other information as in a physical library or book. This saves me a great deal of time when researching and also opens up doors to related information to the one I am researching.
Digital projects certainly have the potential to make social change especially through exposure. Considering how online our modern world is, it is very possible for a digital project like Mason Legacies or Enslaved Children of George Mason to be seen and have an impact on people. These projects would do most of their social change through informing rather than actually presenting new ideas and forming new thoughts. I am a firm believer in the saying “Those who do not learn their history are doomed to repeat it”, so I think these digital projects that teach and inform people about the past can significantly prevent people from making similar mistakes in the future. ¹
When using digital media we can lose a sense of tone and identity that comes with being just another user online. Information presented on the internet can be misinterpreted as it is one sided and is not a conversation where thoughts and ideas can be clearly exchanged. Digital media also runs the risk of being lost in the massive information database that is the world wide web. With all the websites and information on the web their is the possibility of these digital media projects being lost and never really garnering the attention they deserve. The positives of digital media are far more significant however, with the ability to reach people across the country and world in so many places.

1. Mason’s Legacies. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://masonslegacies.org/

Enslaved Children of George Mason(n.d.). Retrieved from https://ecgm.omeka.net/

Blog Post 1

I have always enjoyed history and learning about history so I have a good basic understanding about the Great Depression, New Deal, World War l and ll, and other world events around that time. I am a big believer in the “those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it” saying so I actively try to know my history. This past week of class acted as a good refresher to this time time period while also providing some new aspects to the era that I did not know or think about. The introduction of the older technology and its implementation and importance specifically, are topics that I never gave much thought to when learning about this time period. Things such as the radiophone and the early creation of the silent disco/dance parties are things that I have only recently learned about and I hope to learn more about such things this semester. The near failure of the technology mogul, IBM, is something that I did not know about as well. I am excited to learn about the digital past and the history of digital technology growth and importance as it is not something that I would normally try to educate myself on. I think it will be a great semester to expand my historical knowledge and awareness.
I was assigned to analyze project #38, the photogrammar website, using Miriam Posner’s framework. The Photogrammar website is a collection of over 170,000 pictures from the time period we are discussing in class, 1930’s and 40’s. It is unique in that it geographically categorizes all of its photographs using a map of the United States. This makes the website very organized and easily accessible. The website also posts its main sources in big letters on the main page. Photogrammar allows its users to visually see the highs and lows of the time period and see how specifically how certain areas of the country were impacted differently. The accessibility of this photograph database, being web-based, is extremely useful and enlightening as it provides a more in depth look into the era than textbooks and literature can provide.

Miriam, Posner. (2014, February 1). How did they make that?.Retrieved from http://miriamposner.com/blog/how-did-they-make-that/

Dauterive, Jessica. What is Digital Humanities? Retrieved from https://slides.com/jdauteri/what-is-digital-humanities#/1.