Jeannette Essimi-Menye – The Digital Past Course Blog

Skill 7 Blog 9

For centuries music has been an autobiographical tool to remember. It has been used to pass on information, gather support, or to lament the passage of time and what once was. This was particularly apparent when perusing the Library of Congress Archives. All of the music I listened to was a part of the California Gold collection, an anthology of folk music from Northern California from the 1930s, which highlighted the migrant experience.

During this time period music became a powerful political statement that captured the ideas of the Popular Front. This was a coalition of left leaning organizations that was under girded by the communist party, socialists and independent leftists. When this political movement eventually crumbled and dissolved its underlining tenets remained embedded in the literature, movies, and music of the time. This Cultural Front was led by “black, left, and labor dissenters-who-organized in a newly conducive climate”¹
and eventually led the country into the long civil rights era.

A majority of folk music from this time is a direct reflection of the lives those people lived, the hope they had, the hardships they faced, the religions they clung to² , and their homesickness. The dust bowl drove a lot of people west in hopes of work and that was reflected in the music that was recorded. A number of songs ” depicting California as a veritable promised land“³ ⁴
enticed workers and the mythology surrounding the west became a part of the popular culture.

Having these more personal moments shared through music had a unifying cultural effect because it underscored that many people were experiencing the same things. Although it was well known that impacts of the great Depression were widespread, hearing it sung to you has a different effect. In this way folk music was both a mirror, reflecting the shared trials of life, and a magnifying glass, broadcasting the widespread problems of inequality, dislocation, and joblessness.

Beyond immortalizing the pain of a generation, music was also used to bolster the spirits of the people. Migrants living in labor camps were able to recount stories of their homes, and commune with others. In current popular culture you can see direct link to how music way used back then. At times music is a tool with which to disrupt the system, while at other times music becomes a little bit of oblivion to make life a bit more tolerable.

Blog 7

According to the guide book Vermont was originally comprised primarily English settlers. This racial and cultural homogeneity persisted well into the 20th century because there were no major manufacturing centers in the states. This ensured that there was little to no foreign immigration to the state. As quarry towns began to pop up there was a slow trickle of “Poles, Czechs, and Russians… Austrians and Swedes. ” (51) There was also a predominate number of Scottish, Italian and Welsh people. Interestingly a majority of immigrants either settle in after leaving nearby New Hampshire or were a part of the significant French-Canadian population.

Having read all of this information before looking at the Green Book travel guide, I already new traveling in the area would have been extremely limited if not completely unavailable to Black people. I was of sadly, correct in my estimation. There was no route in the state of Vermont and much of New England was unavailable as well.

Although the guide books where essentially well received and bolstered tourism within the United States, and helped to underscore “states’ diversity and natural landscape”¹ they also perpetuated a false narrative about who was included in that idea of America. These guide books, although generally informative and interesting to read can only fully be navigated by white or white passing men and their families.

In mapping my route as I was reading the descriptions of the different locals I was very particular about which stops I would be willing to make. I was unwilling to chose destinations that seem like they might be too secluded because as a woman traveler it would be a safety risk. Likewise I also avoided selecting towns like Danville, VT where there seemed to have been a strong confederate presence, or a great number of sympathizers. I was constantly aware of how I, as a Black woman would have been forced to navigate spaces that likely would have been hostile and unsafe.

It is particularly bizarre to think about the violence that might have been visited upon me because I have actually taken this trip. This juxtaposition is particularly poignant as I ponder how I would have fared 70 years ago. My race and gender would have informed every choice I was able to make in the public sphere.

The Green Book mapping project and others like it do a phenomenal job of illustrating the spacial impacts of racism. When this sort of information is rendered as a map, it allows for a greater depth of understanding. Being able to “geolocate social justice movements, visualize both historical and present racism and highlight racial issues”² is essential to examining narratives about the past and who was allowed to be American, and understanding injustices as they occur in the present.

My guide

Blog 8

Archives are used to preserve the past as it was unedited by the framing of historical texts. As we explored the Special Collections I was struck by the volume of information that was preserved, essentially in pristine condition, about the Federal Theater Project (FTP). My group in particular had multiples of the same pamphlets as well as multiple copies of transcripts on onion paper. It underscored the ideas that we have been discussing in class all semester, historical pieces are not just stumbled upon and kept, they are intentionally selected and preserved and that selection process also needs to be interrogated.

Elvia Arroyo-Ramirez questioned ” Who gets to be remembered and historicized by way of record creation? Who is forgotten or purposefully silenced in history by way of omission or destruction of records? How are records themselves (official records created for governmental purposes in particular) used to communicate misguided notions of holistic representation, truthfulness, neutrality, and objectivity?”¹ All of these questions can be used to not only interrogate the archival process and the preservation of certain history, but also about the ways those histories are remembered, retold, and reinforced by broad cultural narratives.

Although the FTP might have been deemed radical by the government, it was also extremely popular with the people. Digitized newspaper clippings and play reviews lend credence to the idea that it was broadly enjoyed by the public and the main obstacle to their success was government intervention. The “Voodoo MacBeth” was extremely popular and ran for several months with sold out crowds. Although The Cradle Will Rock was “shuttered at the last minute by nervous WPA officials who found the labor opera’s sentiments too radical”² the public chased down the performers and listened to them sing it from the auditorium in a different theater. As the FTP continued to create perform more daring and radical works, the government also attempted to smother it by making claims about how the public would react. The archives in particular make it more obvious how well received and enjoyed the bulk of the FTP’s works were and highlighted how determined the government was to control the narratives that where being created and disseminated with their funding.

This is in contrast to how well received the Federal Music Project (FMP) was by the government although it was doing much of the same kind of work. The FMP was arguably more radical because it preserved the folk music of different kind of people and celebrated it rather than spreading specific subliminal (and obvious) messages by way of performance. The FMP fostered a more organic dissent from the status quo that inspired more collective movement and was more dangerous in the long run. Perhaps this is why its actual history has systemically been obscured to the point of thinking it reinforced ideas of nationalism and patriotism.

Both the FTP and FMP highlight the importance of archival information and access to that information in the digital space. It allows for the reexamination of historical narratives and a more honest accounting of the past.

Blog 6

Using Voyant for this skill assignment was a slightly bizarre experience for me. It required altering my research question several times and altering the conceit of my question all together. Initially my question sought to figure out how leisure and play activates impacted by the Great Depression in different parts of the country. However I didn’t grasp the different layers that I needed to understand in order to properly answer that question.

Considering the way that Voyent processes information, scanning through the texts that contained the word “play” was not all together helpful because the context would be removed and I would need to close read through hundreds of texts. I also realized that one of my previous search terms, leisure, was only helpful when searching through the library of congress archive because it was a categorization term rather than a word that was naturally occurring in the text.

With all of this information as my foundation, I chose to approach my question from a different angle and simplified my question all together. My question essentially became ‘How did people have fun during the Great Depression’. I used the words ‘fun’ and ‘relax’ and analyzed them through the context tool. This allowed me time find every instance that these words were used while also seeing the context and way in which it was used. The tools allowed me to do a quick scan of the information and in the adjoining view look at the reader view and skim through several paragraphs of the source. I found this to be more helpful than any of the visualization tools.

A bulk of the sources seemed to indicate that music, jazz music in particular where popular as vehicles for fun. Then I backtracked, looked at the sound cloud, selected the word ‘music’ and was able to see its use across a multitude of sources. From that point I was then able to select specific interviews to read more closely to form my opinions and conclusions.

Using Music as my search term from the word cloud

Ultimately my my simplified question ended up with a simplified answer. For fun, most people turned towards music, jazz in particular to forget about the worries for short periods of time. Delving deeper into the sources also brings in information about which cities where predominate in the jazz scene and who was playing the music.

Although I think there is merit to distant reading, I think my preference will always be for close reading. “Personal recollection has a significance of its own” ¹ and i think that is best understood on a singular level rather as an aggregated data point.

Voyant is at its most useful when being used to analyze words absent of context (key word searching, graphs, word clouds, etc) and then allowing the user to re-contextualize the information rather than attempting to superimpose any particular question on the analysis. Miriam Posner mentions that discern significant differences among text and those difference being deemed meaningful ² are not the same things. Whether or not text analysis is actually helpful depends directly on information one is attempting to transform.

Extra Credit

Laura Crossley’s presentation was informative and engaging. It did a good job of outline the ups and down of the digital research space. Her research question was about the representative nature of blogging and whether or not it was still an appropriate way to disseminate information about the digital humanity space as peer reviewed journals and about these subjects become more readily available.

She introduced discourse about the permanence of the scholarship that is done on line, and I found this to be a particularly relevant critique of digital media particularly in this new information age. DH Now is run on a stable platform that is actively managed, but for websites that not well preserved and articles that are older issues of dead links are always top of mind. There is not singular united way to preserve digital scholarship appropriately in the case of a blog or website being abandoned. Part of the appeal of blogging as a complement to traditional scholarship is the free flow of information. In this presentation in particular Crossley mentioned that she was only analyzing links that were not restricted behind paywalls. The internet itself “has more archival information than scholars have ever had access to” ¹This of course highlights the ways in which the internet has democratized the spread and use of information for people who cannot afford to be pay for access to journals.

Lastly, in her text modeling she spoke at length about the ways that topics modeling helped her to see certain trends in word usage while also highlighting the distribution and coherence in word use over time as well the extremely common and closely related vocabulary. It seems that although there are certainly subsections within the digital humanities space, the overall conversations that are happening are rather narrow and untied. I wonder how much of that has to do with the newness of the field and how much of that has to do with the people who are engaging in the scholarship.

Extra Credit, Live-stream

I enjoyed the live-stream about data analysis in the context of art curation that was hosted by the National Gallery of Art. There were a number of presentations which highlighted different facets of the museum curation and selection process while also interrogated the ways in which decisions are made about art acquisition and display practices.

I found that the introductory presentation, given by Diana Greenwald was particularly illuminating because it underscored the importance of not only digitizing information and having data points, but also contextualizing it properly and grounding it in the realities of the art curation process. She also made sure to highlight the fact that cataloguing information from the archives is an entirely human process and is subject to error.

The Data on Display presentation was the most interesting to me because it actually interrogated the question that I most often ask myself when entering a museum space. “Who is on the wall?” is fundamental to understanding whose narratives are being represented and whose art is readily accessible to me as an observer who does not have large knowledge base about the fine arts. I often seek out exhibitions that highlight diverse perspectives and diverse peoples but often these works are confined to one space and not seen throughout the museum at large. This presentation brings attention to the importance of diversity throughout a museum and not just specifically for one exhibit.

This presentation made that point that data curation and art curation should go hand in hand. Knowing whose art is being prominently displayed allowed curators to decide to make different choices in terms of acquisition and staging. In the National Gallery of Art in particular it was mentioned that only 10% of art on the walls were by women while 96% was represented the white experience. These numbers alone display the need for a more intentional approach to inclusiveness.

Another interesting presentation was given on the influence of woman as donors on the long term curation of art given through trusts, donation, or through foundation. Nearly 47% or 42,000 was acquired by the museum because of women who saw the importance in preserving art.

This set of presentation made clear to me that different decisions need to made at all levels of the art acquisition process to create a more diverse and welcoming experience for the typical museum attendee.

Blog post #4

The Long Civil Rights Movement (LCRM) was attempting to edit the pervasive and popular narratives about Black Americans that were foundational to their original subjugation in real time. This long running tradition of marginalized communities altering the status quo of the country from racism, sexism, and classism, towards a more inclusive future is what in part undergirds some work that digital activists engage in.

This new wave of digital activism is publicly interrogating the conceit that the way data and information is displayed for our consumption and use is neutral rather than a direct extension of the reality in which we already exist. Cathy O’ Neil suggests that we should “stop trusting algorithms to be fair”¹ because our technology is essentially a mirror of our society. People themselves are rarely fair and tend more towards being self-serving and most interested in preserving their own narratives particularly when profit making is involved. Rather than believing that what we find first in our searches is most common or most often true, we should read more closely in order to understand “the material conditions on which these results are predicated” ².

A certain level of interrogation is needed to untangle who has decided what we see first, how we should interact with it, and whether or not it is true. This kind of media literacy is often not taught because we have been fed notions of popularity and neutrality as the obvious default.

Interestingly enough when companies like Google are reprimanded for the product that they have created, they often relegate the blame towards the public rather than the inherit flaws in their programming and algorithms. This is the same work that oppressive institutions have been doing generations. Although you can be an accomplice in a system of which you are not an architect, the blame cannot only lie with individuals. The LCRM particularly was predicated on the notion of small legal victories to eventually change the tableau of democracy rather that a complete overhaul of the system. This of course is because it is often extremely difficult to dismantle something that you did not build.

If digital activists can continue to apply pressure to the companies that are responsible for enforcing the status quo (in the same way that the LCRM applied legal pressure to the legal establishment) perhaps we will be able to see our technology made more intersectional, accessible, and accurate.