Ana Talavera – The Digital Past Course Blog

Final Exhibit

The cultural New Deal was an incredible era for innovation. America was reinventing itself and picking up the pieces from the Great Depression. For my final exhibit I decided to discuss immigration regarding Hispano immigrants. My historical question being ‘How did Immigrants experience life during the 1930’s and what do their experiences teach us about America during this time period?’ However, I included Mexican Immigrant discrimination in the Farm Security Administration and then, the different ways the laws discriminated Mexican Immigrants.

I chose to use the glitching skill to showcase and present an argument. I used timeline JS to document the journey to America of a Cuban immigrant, this was used as a way to introduce my historical question. Upon arrival, cuban immigrant Gerardo suffered jobless time periods and starvation as an effect to the Great Depression. Lastly, I used Voyant Tools to analyze similarities or differences In the Manuscripts from the Federal Writers Project and immigration/emigration manuscripts within the FWP. Throughout my exhibit, I decided to leave the glitching gallery towards the end because I was most proud of my work. In Michael Kramer’s piece Using Image Deformance to Rethink Agency and Authenticity in the 1960s American Folk Music Revival, Kramer discusses how “glitching and deformance syncopate our source materials. They allow us to hear the fretwork of history’s complex chordal arrangements with more acumen”. ¹ While glitching the photographs of Mexican children, it felt as though I was rearranging their lives, perhaps altering their experiences and all while shifting color qualities. Glitching seems loud, disturbing, and somehow made me think more critically as to how something as simple as a photograph could be altered through code.

The final exhibit assignment reminded me of Trevor Owens Defining Data for Humanists: Text, Artifact, Information or Evidence where he states “We can choose to treat data as different kinds of things. First, as constructed things, data are a species of artifact. Second, as authored objects created for particular audiences, data can be interpreted as texts. Third, as computer-processable information.” ² I felt as though this assignment did all three of these things because we gathered a primary source that we found interesting, catering to a specific audience (ourselves because we chose it) and as processable information because of our ability to make the source malleable and interpret it in different forms that include the skill aspect.

The history of the 1930’s and New Deal Era has taught me how dependent we are on the policies created by Roosevelt. Social security and welfare are still existent, with the exception that it is more inclusive and not discriminatory. One of my favorite interactive maps this semester was Navigating The Green Book because of the demonstrations depicted. This source made me think about discrimination in America and the changes in time periods. There is a quote in particular that speaks to me, “There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment. But until that time comes we shall continue to publish this information for your convenience each year.” ³ This quote makes me reflect on the changes of America, and more importantly how much more culturally accepting we have become throughout the years.

I will continue to be a great digital citizen by not lying online, and learning to use a password manager. As stated in the article Three Essential Steps to Make Yourself More Hack-Proof it states that in order to protect your identity and important information, “All you’ll ever need to know is the master password. The rest of your passwords are encrypted, and can only be unlocked by that master password.” ⁴ The biggest takeaway from this class was the copyrights section. Content like twitter and facebook make it easy to reproduce content that it already created. Therefore, being more mindful of copyrights is a big takeaway from this course.

http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/exhibits/show/immigration1930

Thank you.

Hispano Music

In the Hispano Music and Culture of the Northern Rio Grande: The Juan B. Rael Collection through the Library of Congress, there are many song recordings and song transcriptions. During the 1930’s, Hispano music consisted of Waltzes and Religious hymns. Religious music was the most popular and through different variations of song lyrics, the ongoing themes were about ending suffering or asking for forgiveness. Waltzes were created for weddings and were considered to be celebratory. Religious hymns are referred to as “Alabados” ¹ and are typically worship songs that were most popular in New Mexico and Colorado. The featured Alabado is typically performed during a Holy communion and translates to “The Lord Gave us his body”. Religion plays an immense role during this time period and offers insight on the different thoughts Latino immigrants had during this time period. Although most Alabados are worship hymns, a majaroity of them are about ending suffering and asking God to be able to go to heaven. Aside from Alabados, waltzes offered an entirely different perspective because they were more upbeat and played during festive time periods. Valse De Cadena ² was a waltz in which dancers would often switch partners all while holding on to each other to form a chain. Most waltzes are instrumental and rarely offer any lyrics. This Valse De Cadena was performed by a dad Mr. Anaya and his two daughters. Mr. Anaya learned to play instruments on his own by listening and watching from afar.

Music in the 1930’s was more religious, and if it was upbeat, there were rarely any words but more instrumental values. While analyzing these songs, it reminded me of Benjamin Filene’s piece on Mastering the Cult of Authenticity where he states that “folk culture challenged the status quo: it challenged dissatisfaction with the emptiness of mass culture”. ³ That statement felt to have followed my journey while diving into this collection because of the uniqueness in the creation of each piece. Most pieces were created by individual families as opposed to one main artist. In Morris Dickstein’s How song, dance, and movies build us out of the Great Depression, he discusses how “The engine of the arts in the ‘30s was not escapism, as we sometimes imagine, but speed, energy and movement at a time of economic stagnation and social malaise.” ⁴ Dickstein states that emerging in the arts helped Americans reflect, while giving them to opportunity to engage and find their inner voice of creativity. Overall, being able to experience music through text is revolutionary because it gives you a concise experience. While reading, forming conclusions and ideas is normal, however being able to actually listen to what an author is trying to convey makes this a great experience. This is a great way to convey meaning and transport an audience back in time.

Tour 2A New Mexico

New Mexico is rich with indigenous culture because of the Native Americans who inhabit the land. The Federal Writers Project tours, offered a way to narrate a storyline into each state and define its culture through the objects and places that exist or once existed. Tour 2A from the WPA offers canyons, trails, monuments and mountains. Most of the locations on the map are of Nature and document the stories once told by Native Americans regarding nature. An example of that can be the names of places such as Tunyo, which is the home of a Savayo Giant who ate children from the Ildefonso Pueblo. ¹ Mapping this scenario from the WPA established a disguised sense of unity. Discussing and establishing the best places in the state create a sense of unity and organization. While doing this project I realize that this must have been how writers in this project felt. Perhaps they too became overwhelmed and excited to showcase the best regions of their state as a way of showing off to other states as a form of competition, or unity once it was put together. In America First: Tourism and National Identity, 1880-1940 by Marguerite Shaffer discusses how “By combining the nation community by community and state by state for scientific attractions, historic monuments, and literary shrines in surveying the political, economic, social and cultural development in each state, and in documenting the diverse natural settings, the Washington office hoped to capture and codify the richness and variety of the American Nation to enable Americans to ‘rediscover their own country.” ²

However, this wonderful journey cannot be declared the same for every American. While comparing my map to the map in Navigating the Green Book, the amount of places a person of colored would be able to navigate in New Mexico would be zero. New Mexico tolerated Native Americans, however other races such as Mexicans would often be discriminated against. The journey from California to New Mexico in the Green Books offers only three places to eat and one hotel. None of these establishments fell under New Mexico. This indicates a colored tourist would have no food or shelter in the state of New Mexico. Being able to dissect these maps and include a map that is analyzing racism in 1947 is substantial to analyzing patterns of racism. In Mapping Racism And Assessing the Success of the Digital Humanities by Sarah Bond discusses the importance of mapping racism because ” Data visualizations, now a key part of digital humanities approaches to organizing and visualizing archived records, have in fact long been a (analog) tool used to illustrate the suffering of African-Americans in the U.S.” ³

Although this project helped Americans create a new profound admiration for their country, it failed to include people of color whom were struggling during this era as well. Mapping can help us construct and deconstruct historical time periods in order to understand conflicting positions.

Digitized Sources

Digital sources offer convenience by being able to gather multiple sources at once in a matter of seconds. This current era allows us to gather sources from our phones or computers at an accessible rate from any location desired. However, primary sources offer authenticity by preserving a source in its natural, ‘almost’ original state. The majority of primary sources are kept in museums, libraries or historical sites. The effort to preserve items such as photographs, journals, diaries, and past historical objects has been a race against time. Overall, being able to gather primary digital sources is difficult because keywords and relevant searches prohibit authentic responses. Digital sources need to be extracted from libraries or archives to uphold the authentic experience.

While analyzing the conversation with Thomas Padilla and Elvia Arroyo-Ramirez in Bias, Perception, and Archival Praxis, Arroyo-Ramirez discusses the nature that goes into archiving primary sources and the effort to preserve them as well as digitize them. Arroyo also discusses the difficulties that come with archives in being unable to protect or include data without having proper resources. Arroyo states that “Acquisition of entire hard drives makes appraisal for donors a lot more difficult and places the responsibility of protecting sensitive or personal data on archivists, who, on the whole are not nearly paid enough; not equipped with the necessary tools and infrastructure; and do not have enough hours of the day to devote the labor necessary to peruse every file”. ¹ This line indicates the amount of time and effort it takes to archive sources and also examines why these sources are often difficult to gather or find by the internet.

In The Artifactual Elements of Born- Digital Records Part 2, Jefferson Bailey discusses the hardships that can go into emulating a primary source and recreating them without tainting their value. The recreation of Thomas Jeffersons Library contains “original cataloging system and also recreates the unique circular construction of his bookcases. Clearly, how Jefferson arranged his books and shelves adds meaning to the collection. The artifactuality of his library itself, not just its content, influences our interpretation and understanding of him as a historic figure.” ² Bailey states that being able to recreate sources gives a new meaning to the source by gaining a new interpretation. Overall, both readings offer the pros and the cons of digitizing sources. Arroyo- Ramirez demonstrates the intensive labor that goes into archiving and how these sources can be selective based off of sponsors. Bailey discusses how emulating sources with the technology given may give new incite on our understanding of the source. Overall, digitizing sources and finding authentic sources online will continue to be a hardship unless an easier process can be obtained. Emulating sources may be a great alternative to gaining new understanding, however misinterpretation may occur because of technological advancements such as editing or altering specific pieces.

Text Analysis

The Federal Writers’ project was a way for white Americans to document the experiences of others during the Great Depression. This created more jobs and historical documentation of the Great Depression through the lens on many Americans. The texts I chose for my text analysis project were based on Latino immigration. While reading a A Cultural History of the Federal Writers’ Project by Jerrold Hirsch I came across a quote on immigration that says “Only after World War II was immigration apotheosized as quintessential part of the American experience. Historian Oscar Handlin argued ‘Once I thought to write about the history of immigrants in America. Then I discovered the immigrants were American History”¹ This quote is a great example on how the Federal Writers’ Project spread through different states and gathered distinctions/similarities of Americans.

My historical question was composed from the quote by Hirsch “How did Immigrants experience life in America during the Great Depression? What do their experiences teach us about America during this time period?”. My assumptions about the life of immigrants during the Great Depression became one that included starvation and poverty. An example of immigration hardships and decline can be found is in the American Yawp “1930 to 1940 the Mexican-born population living in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas fell from 616,998 to 377,433. with jobs suddenly scarce, hostile attitudes intensified, and official policies less than welcoming, immigration plummeted and deportations rose. Over the course of the Depression, more people left the United States than entered it.” ² While choosing text files, I noticed a pattern of immigrants who had a great come up and then transitioned into struggle during the Great Depression. Regions like Florida and New York had immigrants who worked in factories and were able to purchase multiple properties. However, when Depression hit America, many were faced with the reality that their only options were to try and make ends meet or go back to their countries.

Uploading the class Corpus to Voyant was easy but I refrained from having any specific assumptions on my findings since I knew my classmates historical questions varied from mine. However after it was uploaded, I was fascinated by being able to look at topics aside from my own. It is a great visualization of what others were discussing in this time frame. The set statistics demonstrate important commonly used words, a map of places discussed in the texts and a number of unique words. I used the map tool called Dreamscape, which shows the most commonly listed areas in the documents. This also included places I had used in my text files search. The cirrus tool contains an array of words that also correlate to words I had seen in my texts. Overall, this was a great way to analyze texts and generate more ideas by being able to play with different aspects of the text. This also made me conclude that immigrants journey is only slightly different than Americans during the Great Depression and that their experiences are more similar than different.

Voices of Slavery

The interview I chose was with Uncle Bob Ledbetter and took place in Louisiana at an Oil City. This interview was published in 1940 with the main contributors being John Lomax and Ruby Lomax. ¹ Throughout this interview, one can come to the conclusion that Uncle Bob was a down to earth, happy human being who did not let his past experiences get in the way of his new life. I was surprised at how Uncle Bob rarely mentioned a mortifying event in his life, with his only comments about his boss Mr. Noeller, was that he was “the meanest man on earth, but he never cussed at me”. Uncle Bob reminisced on how he was the oldest slave of the boys and never received any money. At a young age his father taught him how to read and write. From this interview, it can be noted that faith and devotion to church is what helped many slaves get through this difficult era. Uncle Bob joined church at the age of 19 and from then on, claimed he was devoted to always doing the right thing.

Uncle Bob’s interview reminded me of Chapter XII of The American Yawp where it states “The Negro was born in depression. It didn’t mean too much to him. The Great American Depression . . . only became official when it hit the white man.” ² Black workers were generally the last hired when businesses expanded production and the first fired when businesses experienced downturns.” While analyzing my interview, this statement became reality because Uncle Bob was never paid and hardly mentioned times of eating because Mr. Noeller would not feed him. It can be estimated that Uncle Bob was 78 years old at the time this interview took place.

Although major events occurred during this time period, such as the construction of the panama canal and the stock market crash, these events subtly affected slaves. My overall perspective was that people of color have always been struggling, and in their struggles they found it in themselves to pickup the pieces and continue with the little they had and move forward. History is told and experienced in a different way for everyone. The way historians speak about history can be seen through the bigger picture, while smaller interviews help us see and determine how these events came about as well as how they molded Americans throughout the years.

https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=14O2aBeuaM4Vu9HYEh4GhyCthO4LtxGDDMvak157M8sU&font=Default&lang=en&initial_zoom=2&height=650

Algorithms

An Algorithm as described by Cathy O’neil is an opinion embedded in math. ¹ The purpose for an algorithm is to determine success through historical data to give the best accurate outcome. Algorithmic criticism is seen through web searches and different lengths of advertising, as well as racism. To some degree, most algorithms are racist because of the data and stereotypes embedded into these equations. While reading Safiya Nobel’s Algorithms of Oppression, simple acts such as researching women becomes a an event of discrimination and judgement. ² Search engines, such as google have created stereotypes for white and black women. Black women are loud, ghetto or angry. While white woman are portrayed as beautiful, perfect or skinny. People of color have endured a difficult and lengthy path to advocate for civil rights.

In the New Deal Era, people of color were excluded from social security and welfare. Black people struggled to be recognized and obtain rights that were given to all white Americans. Despite the fact that Black Americans are now granted the basic rights of freedom, algorithms are a subtle reminder of how racism is still alive and thriving. Using historical data set to prevent loans or credit cards based off of technological systems can be dangerous. AI software used by Google is very powerful within itself, and although the system is programed to make good assumptions based on patters, it fails to recognize the ethics that comes with it.

In order to become better consumers of digital media we must hold companies responsible and enforce action towards understanding minorities. We must ask questions and question their overall definition of success by their motives. As O’neil stated, we must hire data analyst to look over patterns and trends to ensure these softwares are meeting basic measure of success, while granting reasonable explanations that refrain from being discriminatory, racist or biased.

Image Analysis

My image selection process was very methodical and precise. My skill assignments are dedicated to the memorabilia of the Latino culture and representation of the cultural groups through historic media. History, during the Great Depression does not demonstrate enough Latinos because a majority were sent back to their countries of origin. Therefore my assignments will represent the Latinos captured during these times in an effort to demonstrate how different groups dealt with the Great Depression.

My image is called “Child of a Migratory Farm Laborer” which shows a little Latino boy sitting on the ground of a cabbage field. While analyzing this image, a few questions I asked myself were, “Aside from immigration, how were Latinos managing survival as well as getting by through the Great Depression? Did they suffer equal or worse discrimination than Black people?”. More importantly “After a wave of deportation, how did that affect immigrations laws for Latinos specifically?”. The documentary evidence that could be gathered is that there are not enough laws or precautionary measures for children to be on the work place, or the existence of continuing child labor. This image was unique because the boy in the photograph was smiling. Most photographs from different collections showed little or no facial expression on both adults and children. However, smiling depicts a different environment that is not as terrorizing or “depressing” through the conditions of others.

While working on the glitched version of this photograph, I worked from the bottom up. I found these methods easy and rare with the ongoing thought that each movement was randomized. As stated by Michael Kramer, “glitching and deformance make it possible for us to brush history against the grain by, in a certain sense, changing the patterns of the grain itself. Digitally remediated, the source’s representational layers become more alive. Distortions to artifacts caused by these tactics ironically generate more accurate considerations of the traces of the past embedded in them.” ¹ Distortions allow us to “rearrange” history and alter prespectives by changing an image into something entirely different. In doing so, it gives us less to think about by letting us see a glitched photograph for what it is and gets rid of a made up storyline by viewing an original photo. Trevor Owens stated “I think it suggests the value of understanding the integrity of digital objects not simply as ‘looking right’ in one particular reading out to the screen. In many cases, the integrity of the objects is something that can be expressed through a range of software enabled readings of it.” ² Trevor is reminding us that something as simple as a photograph is more complex as it appears by the underlying code. This has helped me comprehend underlying codes as well as study how these methods can create different perspectives.

Bibliography

http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/items/show/159

http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/exhibits/show/ana-talavera/child-of-a-migratory-farm-labo

Guest Lecture

Tony Guidone started off with a slide called ‘Digitization and Keyword Research’. Following this slide, he includes how online databases have shaped our ability to find information at the tip of our fingers. An example created was from the reading The Canadian Historical Review, concluding that the newspaper Toronto Star was cited 753 times in 67 different dissertations. Our accessibility from then on, creates a tainted vision for searching for primary sources. It becomes easier to find sources that contain multiple sources, which become umbrellas to different research questions. While reading The Canadian Historical Review, Ian Milligan said “why focus on the keywords? While undoubtedly some users are skimming occasionally, the main reason for the increased use of databases is keyword searches. This enables large scale media searching: representations of a specific word, activities of a group or evolving cultural conceptions of a term.” This reminded me of when Tony stated that when looking up a keyword, we must put ourselves in the position of “what would they call this?” as opposed to “what would I call this?” ¹

Tony explains that there are overall pros and cons to digital sources. Con’s would be the loss of original meanings conveyed by touch, or gaining the original experience and thrill of experiencing history face to face. Pro’s include accessibility whenever and wherever, because of smartphones, tablets, and laptops. Accessibility also enables critical thinking in ways that could engage new research questions. Tony mentions that both are important and could not thrive without incorporating one or the other. Tony also discusses the importance of using as many primary sources as possible, because those are the sources that hold much more original value. This lecture reminded me of Trevor Owens Defining Data where he states that sources are texts, artifacts, and processable information. However, he defines data as a species of artifacts, which could be understood as precious valuable information. Trevor mentions how data was created for an audience and should therefore engage the audience, all while pleasing the author who created it. ²

Overall this was a great guest lecture. Very informative, and it has had me brainstorming ever since.

Works Cited

Milligan, Ian. “Illusionary Order: Online Databases, Optical Character Recognition, and Canadian History, 1997–2010.” Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/article/527016.

Owens, Trevor. “» Defining Data for Humanists: Text, Artifact, Information or Evidence? Journal of Digital Humanities.” Journal of Digital Humanities, journalofdigitalhumanities.org/1-1/defining-data-for-humanists-by-trevor-owens

blog post 1

The 1930’s are a phenomenal place to begin to pick apart different sectors of the economy, entertainment, and environment. The 1930’s offered the introduction of new technologies such as IBM being rescued by the social security act and creating an official computing device. The Great Depression is my favorite time period, although it is a harsh moment in history, it has been an example for the prevention of similar acts to occur. Therefore, my overall understanding of this course is to touch bases on how different technology has affected history and ways we can use technology to examine these different sectors. Miriam Posner offers great methods to examine a project and understand how to dissect it in a logical way. Although I found it slightly confusing trying to pick apart the overall key factors of the sources, I hope with time I am also able to look at a source and recognize the key elements of structure, data analysis and format.

The source I received was The making of a Broadside Ballad which explains the in depth creation of a Broadside Ballad as well as its functionality. The website offers a listed order on how it is made such as paper making, wood cutting, writing verses/ looking for verses, performance, and an overall reflection on how the process affected their perception. The steps are explained through instructional videos, with the exception of the introduction and reflection essays at the end. My overall understanding for the making of the Ballads, was to gain emotional understanding of the process and engage in critical thinking to understand the history of the Ballads. The making of a Broadside ballad, taught me what a ballad is, how it is made, and how the process of making it altered perspectives by comparison to the ones in history. I was heavily impressed with the time dedicated into the individual construction of a ballad. Craftsmanship appeared to be a delicate composed act in creating a perfect Ballad. Overall, the source offered great informational tutorials on how to create these pieces.

“Syllabus and Course Info.” Hist 390 The Digital Past:A Cultural New Deal, jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/exhibits/show/fall-2019/syllabus.

“the making of A Broadside Ballad.” The EMC Imprint | Publishing Multi-Media Literary and Cultural Studies, 1500-1800, press.emcimprint.english.ucsb.edu/the-making-of-a-broadside-ballad/index.