fall-2019 – The Digital Past Course Blog

Timeline, Natalie Farrey

This timeline was created based on the life of Mr. George Johnson, an ex-slave once owned the president of the confederate states of America, Jefferson Davis. His interview provided a plethora of information about how enslaved people were treated and about music on plantations. However, as illustrated in the timeline, most of what he considered notable life events came after he left the plantation in 1884.

This was very surprising to me since I expected the interview to mostly focus on his life while enslaved not on his life afterwards. On further examination of the timeline you can also see that Mr. Johnson claimed to have left the plantation almost 20 years after the Civil War ended. This raised two questions: was this simply a matter of an elderly man having difficulty remembering dates or was this a matter of history?

I’m sure many slave owners were reluctant to give up their slaves and held on to them as along as possible. Though I can’t remember being taught anything like that in my history classes. I’m still unsure if this is just a simple mistake made by Mr. Johnson himself, or a problem with the way historians teach us this period in history. This question of how accurate the dates given were made the interview a little less useful than I had hoped.

Making a timeline relies on knowing about when an event happened, but Mr. Johnson was frequently unable to provide a date or gave a range for most events that happened in his life. Most of the time I had to calculate and give the most likely year for the timeline. So, in this aspect the interview was not all that useful, but it was extremely useful when it came to understand the person who was telling their life story.

Mr. Johnson spoke so proudly; he was obviously very proud of what he had accomplished in life. You could hear how passionate he was when he spoke about music. This ability to hear his tone and exact words was amazing. Although I’ll admit I had a hard time understanding what he was saying at certain points. I wasn’t the only one either, when reading the “Note on the Language of the Narratives” I discovered that the people conducting the interviews were also not able to understand the people they interviewed a good amount of the time. This is extremely evident in the transcriptions of the interviews that are missing many things Mr. Johnson had said.

Though the fact that they made an effort to preserve these people’s stories speaks a lot to the social history of the U.S. at the time. As stated in the Slave Narrative Collection opening essay, these interviews were collected during the years 1936 through 1938. To me this shows that people are genuinely taking an interest in what these people went through and want to preserve their stories. I think this really shows the United States effort to preserve our history.

Citations:

“A Note on the Language of the Narratives : Articles and Essays : Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938 : Digital Collections : Library of Congress.” The Library of Congress. Accessed January 22, 2020. https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/articles-and-essays/note-on-the-language-of-the-narratives/#note.

“An Introduction to the WPA Slave Narratives : Articles and Essays : Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938 : Digital Collections : Library of Congress.” The Library of Congress. Accessed January 22, 2020. https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/articles-and-essays/introduction-to-the-wpa-slave-narratives/.

Lomax, Alan, Elizabeth Lyttleton Sturz, George Johnson, Lewis Wade Jones, Charles Spurgeon Johnson, and John W Work. Interview with George Johnson, Mound Bayou, Mississippi, Septemberpart 1 of 6. Mound Bayou, Mississippi, 1941. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/afc1941002_afs04777a/.

Lomax, Alan, Elizabeth Lyttleton Sturz, George Johnson, Lewis Wade Jones, Charles Spurgeon Johnson, and John W Work. Interview with George Johnson, Mound Bayou, Mississippi, Septemberpart 2 of 6. Mound Bayou, Mississippi, 1941. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/afc1941002_afs04777b/.

Lomax, Alan, Elizabeth Lyttleton Sturz, George Johnson, Lewis Wade Jones, Charles Spurgeon Johnson, and John W Work. Interview with George Johnson, Mound Bayou, Mississippi, Septemberpart 3 of 6. Mound Bayou, Mississippi, 1941. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/afc1941002_afs04778a/.

Lomax, Alan, Elizabeth Lyttleton Sturz, George Johnson, Lewis Wade Jones, Charles Spurgeon Johnson, and John W Work. Interview with George Johnson, Mound Bayou, Mississippi, Septemberpart 4 of 6. Mound Bayou, Mississippi, 1941. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/afc1941002_afs04778b/.

Lomax, Alan, Elizabeth Lyttleton Sturz, George Johnson, Lewis Wade Jones, Charles Spurgeon Johnson, and John W Work. Interview with George Johnson, Mound Bayou, Mississippi, Septemberpart 5 of 6. Mound Bayou, Mississippi, 1941. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/afc1941002_afs04779a/.

Lomax, Alan, Elizabeth Lyttleton Sturz, George Johnson, Lewis Wade Jones, Charles Spurgeon Johnson, and John W Work. Interview with George Johnson, Mound Bayou, Mississippi, Septemberpart 6 of 6. Mound Bayou, Mississippi, 1941. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/afc1941002_afs04779b/.

Image Analysis, Natalie Farrey

For this assignment my historical question was what did Oklahoma look like during the Dust Bowl and how did it affect the people living there? I specifically wanted to focus on Oklahoma because of how much it had been brought up in the readings and in class. I found this picture in the Library of Congress database and knew I had to use it. This image really shows how important documentary evidence is when teaching history and reveals so much about the 1930s. My great grandfather always told stories about the Dustbowl, but I never felt like I could see it in my head just right. By seeing photos from the time period, it makes it feel more real and I feel like I got a better sense of what was happening.

This photograph makes you realize that in the 1930s’ people had to abandon the lives they made due to something they couldn’t control. It not only showed what the Oklahoma land looked like in the Dust Bowl, but it also captured the despair people were feeling at the time. I used two methods that I used to realize that: image annotation and glitching. Both are very useful tools when it comes to analyzing historical images, though I did prefer image annotation to glitching.

Annotating the image was extremely helpful for me personally. I felt like it made me think more about what the photo was about and what Dorothea Lange was trying to say with it. I also felt that it’s much easier than glitching an image. Although glitching seemed fairly easy after I had read Trevor Owens’ article, I found it very difficult to understand the code and not render the image completely unrecognizable.

Once I figured out how to properly glitch the image, I learned how useful glitching could be. It can be used to make a statement using a historical photograph. For example in an article written by Michael J. Kramer called “Glitching History”, he shows a picture of an important folk artist named John Hurt during the 1960s folk music festival. Using the glitching method Kramer shifted Hurt to the center of the photograph. He did this to make a statement about how influential Hurt was in the folk music revival.

Glitching also taught me how simple it is to change a historical image; it really makes you wonder how many people have digitally edited a historical image in order to make it look like something it wasn’t. This thought makes you think more about where a photo on the internet is really coming from and what changes have been made to it.

Link to image analysis exhibit: http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/exhibits/show/image-analysis–farrey

Link to Omeka item for orginal photo:http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/items/show/472

Link to Omeka item for glitched photo: http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/items/show/473

Citations:

Dana Cochran et al., “The Great Depression,” Matthew Downs, ed., in The American Yawp, eds. Joseph Locke and Ben Wright (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018).

Kramer, Michael J. “Glitching History: Using Image Deformance to Rethink Agency and Authenticity in the 1960s American Folk Music Revival.” Current Research in Digital History, January 1, 1970. https://crdh.rrchnm.org/essays/v01-08-glitching-history/.

Lange, Dorothea. Worn-out Land and Abandoned Cabins near Newport, Oklahoma. Photograph. Library of Congress . Library of Congress. Accessed January 21, 2020. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017770101/.

Owens, Trevor. “Glitching Files for Understanding: Avoiding Screen Essentialism in Three Easy Steps.” Glitching Files for Understanding: Avoiding Screen Essentialism in Three Easy Steps | The Signal, November 5, 2012. https://blogs.loc.gov/thesignal/2012/11/glitching-files-for-understanding-avoiding-screen-essentialism-in-three-easy-steps/.

Looking Back: Mobility and the 1930s

Final Project: http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/exhibits/show/moving-on-up

Ever since we started learning about the different departments of the Cultural New Deal, I have been captivated by the idea of mobility. Throughout all of the New Deal, something was moving, something was happening and the people greatly benefitted from it. ¹People came together and got things done. What really tipped this off for me was when we watched “It Happened One Night” for homework. There are so many examples of mobility within that movie that even I got excited or had to dance along to the music.

To me, this project was reminiscent of a 5-paragraph essay, so I handled it that way. I focused my argument around mobility being a major theme and result of the New Deal. I wanted to study the Federal Art Project as well, but I mostly just kept it to the Federal Writers Project, the Federal Music Project, and the Federal Theatre Project. Each one of them provided movement in a unique way.

The Federal Writers Project focused on making the American Guides series to help establish what a new America would look like coming out of the Depression. The guides would be a tool to codify what the nation now is and be emblematic of American patriotism. ² To me, the tours got people moving and exploring and figuring out what America would be like. I focused on the touring aspects of the guides, specifically in Maine, discovering that some of the tours went through wilderness. I conveyed this through a story map, showing how the tours were not cyclical, but more linear, running predominantly in the cardinal directions. Using the map helps clarify the distance and vastness of the land covered.

The Federal Music Project, is, to me, the best project out of the four. I find it simply amazing all the songs they were able to collect and create. The way the FMP got people moving was through the gathering of folk songs. These became emblematic of American roots and where people came from, permitting a mixture of cultures. It provided entertainment for the American people and traveled with them when they eventually joined the war in 1945. It was able to thrive like this because it held no political partisanship. ³ There were not many high-profile figures in the FMP machine, just normal people wanting to make and collect music. For this project, the obvious choice was soundcite. With it, music and words can harmonize and good ideas can be generated. I mostly used it to show emotion that evoked movement or the desire to join in and sing.

The Federal Theater Project, complete opposite of the situation in the FMP, was very high-profile with the risk-taking Hallie Flannagan at the helm. Much of the movement the FTP brought came in the form of theater shows which shook up society. A great example of this is Orson Welles’s “Macbeth,” ⁴his debut stage play. It was a radical idea having African-Americans in major roles of Shakespeare as well as changing the location of the work. People gave it the connotation of “voodoo” thanks to this. The play got the gears moving for the FTP, bringing in lots of revenue. For this one, I used Omeka’s annotation feature to look at an image from Macbeth. I used it to explain how this was an up-and-coming time for various ethnicities, and African-Americans were finally being brought to the limelight of the stage. The movement here is the lifting up of others.

Much of the technology I used in this project is great. I feel that it can really help bring to light certain aspects of history we might be unable to see from just a cursory glance or reading. We, as digital historians, are able to look deeper into the subject and draw out new ideas to get a new perspective on things. Before this class, I barely knew much about the New Deal, but now I see the real breadwinner programs that helped solidify American culture. Trends like comics and social security still persists to this day, even the idea of popular “pop” music which resonates with the people. Ideas being remixed
⁵ for future use, like many of the songs Lomax collected are reused by modern day rap and hip-hop artists. ⁶ I hope to carry all this knowledge with me into future courses here at school.

Let’s explore the senses

For my final project in this course I asked the historic question of ‘How does exploring the New Deal through the five senses portray the work it took to rebuild America? “. Through research and building an online exhibit I was able to find answers to my question. During the Great Depression “Unemployment peaked at 25 percent in 1932. With no end in sight, and with private firms crippled and charities overwhelmed by the crisis, Americans looked to their government as the last barrier against starvation, hopelessness, and perpetual poverty” (American Yawp). With people unable to work can a sense of hopelessness and unhappiness swept the country. When the New Deal took action many programs were implemented to get people moving again and back to work.

My first page of my exhibit explores the importance of sound during the New Deal. I explain how President Roosevelt used the radio to broadcast his live “Fireside Chats”. This took work, people had to get a radio to listen in, be home at a certain time to listen or go somewhere if they did not have one. I incorporated a clip of Roosevelt speaking into this page using soundcite. Being able to hear the sound of Roosevelt’s friendly voice speaking to his people makes you understand how the citizens also began to trust him. The trust is what helped immensely in the success of his New Deal programs.

The next to pages of my exhibit focus on touch. For touch I incorporate the Federal Art Project image and annotated them. This project came about because of the idea that “Investment in art would be ‘in material wealth, contentment and well being’”(Park & Markowitz). I used annotation here because I wanted users to have to physically touch their mouse and click on the annotation so that while they are viewing my exhibit they are using their sense of touch as well.

I grouped together the last three senses and formed my page on the American Guide Series. I used a map because “Digital mapping and database construction can allow us to reconstruct, preserve, and visualize vestiges of the past “ (posner) I wanted people to move through the map I added and feel as though they were actually taking a trip from the book. Envisioning the new sights they would see, smells and even tastes. I also added in a few sentences about America Eats which was a book that was never fully published Writers still “ collected amazing stories: interviewing cooks and eaters” and “ transcribing recipes”(America Eats).

After finishing my project I can conclude that exploring the New Deal through your senses does in fact make the work it took to succeed more prominent. I wanted to be able to” illustrate ideas and movement, not necessarily data points as we’ve been discussing them “. My point to this whole exhibit was that Americans had lost their way because of the Great Depression. When the New Deal arouse and Americans were given the opportunity to do something about it they jumped right to it. They were put to work. If nobody had made artwork, got a radio or traveled the country the success would not have been so great. They wanted to work to make America better and that is exactly what they did.

Mulligan, Shannon. Exploring the New Deal Through the Five Senses.http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/exhibits/show/exploring-the-new-deal-through

The Great Depression. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the “First” New Deal. Retrieved from http://www.americanyawp.com/text/23-the-great-depression/

America Eats. https://whatamericaate.org/about.php

Bond, S. E. Mapping Racism and Assessing the Success of Digital Humanities. (https://sarahemilybond.com/2017/10/20/mapping-racism-and-assessing-the-success-of-the-digital-humanities/)

Posner, M. Humanities Data a Necessary Contradiction. http://miriamposner.com/blog/humanities-data-a-necessary-contradiction/

Park, M & Markowitz, G. New Deal for Public Art. (Dropbox)

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

Final Exhibit Blog Post

Creating this exhibit was a stressful experience, I constantly felt like I was doing things wrong or not doing enough. Now that I’ve finished it I’m very happy with how it turned out. I felt like I was able to create exactly what I wanted, an exhibit that not only answered my historical question: how and why the Great Depression era was harder for Immigrant Americans, and make it feel very personal.

I wanted my exhibit to not only answer my question but to also tell a story. I wanted it to feel personal and like you were listening to the people talk about their own experiences. That’s why I choose the digital tools I did. I choose to make an image gallery so the viewer could see the faces of the people whose stories were being told. I feel like being able to see someone’s face makes you relate to them easier. That is always why I choose to use sound cite, that way you could see their faces and hear their voices. It makes it feel more personal and really gets the message through to the reader.

I choose to use a geo-location map to tell the stories of immigrant Americans for multiple reasons. The first being it was a great way to compile multiple stories from many people for the viewer to easily access, but it also demonstrated how widespread the problems immigrant Americans faced were. I think my choices of digital tools added a lot to my exhibit and really transformed my sources. They changed them from just photos and stories to something much more personal and relatable. Besides that they really helped me display what I’ve learned in this class.

The main thing I learned in this class was the importance of learning how to use technology in matters relating to history and record keeping. One of the articles we had read stated that the National Archive and Records Administration won’t be taking records on paper anymore starting on December 31^st, 2022. I’ve always been someone who preferred traditional pen and paper over reading something on my computer. So, this class has been extremely helpful in getting me prepared for that.

Besides preparing me for the future this class taught me about digital citizenship. That had always been a topic in high school that I never really paid much attention too. That was until the article about how someone was able to create an internet hoax and the guest speaker who talked to us about how he and a class of college students here at George Mason were able to create a hoax online. This information shocked me and made me much more aware of what I’m reading. I really believe that lecture made me a better digital citizen as I’ve become a lot more critical of my sources of information and I’ve stopped retweeting what I’ve now learned are fake news. I definitely feel like this lecture specifically helped me become a more ethical and productive digital citizen.

I also learned a lot about the 1930s in this class. We talked a lot about the Great Depression and its effects on the American people. I learned a lot about the politics in that time, especially about President Herbert Hoover. I also learned about the Dustbowl and how it caused so many people to leave Oklahoma in search of a better life in California. I’m certain that these lessons that I’ve learned about the 1930s will stick with me through life because of the lessons they carry.

I’m a firm believer that when you don’t learn about history it’s bound to repeat itself, so that is a big reason why these lessons will stay with me, but I have another reason for why I believe these lessons will stick with me. The 1930’s leaves a legacy of American resilience. We went through such a hard time and emerged better than we were before. It’s a reminder that no matter how hard things get we can always get through it and possibly emerge better than we were before.

In the end I’ve learned a lot throughout this class and during the process of making this exhibit. It was a long process that caused a lot of stress but in the end, I am extremely proud of what I’ve created. I think my exhibit does exactly what I wanted it to and I feel like I was able to learn a lot not only about the 1930’s but also about digital citizenship and how to use the digital resources that are available to me.

Citations:

Appelbaum, Yoni. “How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, May 15, 2012. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/05/how-the-professor-who-fooled-wikipedia-got-caught-by-reddit/257134/.

Dana Cochran et al., “The Great Depression,” Matthew Downs, ed., in The American Yawp, eds. Joseph Locke and Ben Wright (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018).

Milligan, Ian. “Historians’ Archival Research Looks Quite Different in the Digital Age.” The Conversation, August 19, 2019. http://theconversation.com/historians-archival-research-looks-quite-different-in-the-digital-age-121096?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=twitterbutton.

“The Migrant Experience”, Voices from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940 to 1941, Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov/collections/todd-and-sonkin-migrant-workers-from-1940-to-1941/articles-and-essays/the-migrant-experience/

End of Semester Reflection

http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/exhibits/show/locked-boxes–how-mexican-amer

I believe, throughout this semester, I have been growing more and more adept at seeing history through another person’s eyes. That may sound like meaningless tripe, but our multimedia approach helped incorporate enough viewpoints, enough points of analysis, that I felt I had a reasonably well fleshed out picture to go about a juncture in history. I love history, but the periods I am interested in are long before the advents of sound and visual recordings. It was refreshing to know that there were real people behind the pages of the annals. I found the slave narratives fascinating to listen to, absorbing the “collective portrait of a historical population” and picking up just how casually, how disappointedly those century-old voices discussed bondage. I can now say that I finally understand what is meant by ‘living history’. ¹

Never before, when I studied the Great Depression for school, did I have such a detailed and analytical view of the interaction between Roosevelt’s new institutions and the people. The Farm Security Administration seems just as real to me as Social Security or the Department of Defence in today’s news when I read the in-depth Library of Congress articles that witness “FSA camps [furnish] the migrants with a safe space in which to retire from the discrimination that plagued them and in which to practice their culture and rekindle a sense of community”, or when listening to the myriad recordings the Farm Security Administration made of folk songs. ² Institutional racism– normally such an abstract topic– hits home when expressed by digital history tools. The message comes across so much rawer, so much more directly when you see racism classified into red and yellow circles– and how big those circles are. ³

The tools that aided the most in realising digital history would have to be the Knightlab services. Storymap and Timeline were intuitive, clean-looking programs that take long strides towards newer, better visuals. Though I found them to be a pain to work with at times, I delighted in the results, which encouraged me to be a consummate ‘visualiser’, putting into visuals what I wanted to say. Soundcite, in particular, excited me; ever since I can remember, navigating to a whole other page whenever I wanted to listen to what an article or song review was talking about annoyed me to no end. I never really noticed how annoyed it made me until the class was introduced to Soundcite, and now I have a name for an article that makes you navigate away from their page, just to get some context: badly designed. Storymap and Soundcite were crucial to my final project, allowing me to analyse in unique ways two big aspects of migrant culture: their music and their movement. Underpinned by a few nice photographs, I arrived at a project I was proud to have composed.

The Knightlab visual tools inspired me to think of the medium as the message you want to convey to audiences. This philosophy echoed throughout the course, and I felt it was declared most potently in Michael Hobbes’ ‘Millennials Are Screwed’. We know that millennials are screwed. We have read countless think pieces with the same premise and similar data. What makes Hobbes’ articles unique is that visuals not only punctuate his point, but they are the point, portraying the data in a way that is interesting to those familiar with it, but with a universal language that reaches those unfamiliar with it. Because the accessible graphics enabled such a universality, Hobbes’ arguments are significantly amplified. That’s the power of a good medium. ⁴

This applied equally to our discussions of historiography and how representation, sample sizes, contexts, down to even the tone and race of the historian conducting the history can seismically change our present-day understanding. As digital consumers and producers, a goal that should be constantly kept in the background of our Internet is how radically the media we express a message in impacts future viewings of that message, to the point of it becoming the message altogether. What we have of history today is a very mixed bag of disparate historiography quality. Hopefully, as more aware digital citizens, using keener and more accurate tools, we can mitigate that disparity.

Dream Radically: A New Deal

Coming into this class, I had very little knowledge on the New Deal. For instance, I had no idea that the government attempted to get artists back to work through federally-funded agencies. I also never gave much thought to the history of socialism in the United States, I simply assumed that leftist-politics weren’t prominent in the US until after the cold war. But that idea was dismantled when we learned about Huey Long’s “Share Our Wealth Society” campaign.¹ But what really intrigued me in this class was how in such a precarious a time, President Roosevelt challenged various cultural and societal norms in order to rehabilitate and create a stronger nation. Although the New Deal was not inherently radical in its intent, it created major structural change in American law, culture, and society.² The history of the 1930s isn’t dead, and it should be used to envision a better future. Learning about the diverse ways that the “government assumed the role of protector” gave me hope for a possibility of a future where we can revert to the same, if not better, framework of progression; a framework based on collectivism and protection for all people, not just CEO’s and the top 1%, our modern-day robber barons.³

Screenshot from “Millennials Are Screwed”

For my final project, I named my exhibit “The WPA & The Reimagining of American Life” because through the WPA and FDR’s legislation on labor, there was a rethinking of what the standards of working and living should be in America. In the first segment, I use a timeline to help the audience better contextualize how President Roosevelt used a multifaceted approach towards changing the trajectory of labor. Using the timeline was beneficial because I was able to put each distinction, the legislation and the WPA projects, into its own layer. In the next segment, I used the image analysis to break down the significance of the WPA posters and how their individual campaigns- work safety, recreation, art, and education, affected working class lifestyles. The final segment mapped the infrastructure created by the various WPA agencies in Washington, D.C. The mapping tool allows the audience to see how extensive the WPA agencies were, the range and diversity of the constructed sites, and whether the establishments are still used today.

Overall, I hope this exhibit allows people to recognize that there are living, reoccurring themes in history. What seemed radical and unachievable to many people in the 1920s, is seen as socially acceptable and normal now; a minimum wage, restrictions on child labor, and the creation of a pension system were policies that Roosevelt had to carefully craft into success. By 1934, he had opposition from business-friendly republicans, democrats in the South, and various conservative justices in the Supreme Court.⁴ What I hope people recognize is that it’s not naive to dream of a radically better future, it’s achievable. And it’s also our responsibility. It’s our responsibility to be critical of the products of tech-capitalism, corporations, and systems that only benefit a few, over the exploitation of many. As Michael Hobbes beautifully crafts in his digital storytelling, we can let our economic infrastructure keep disintegrating and wait to see if the rising seas get us before our social contract dies. Or we can build an equitable future that reflects our values and our demographics and all the chances we wish we’d had.”⁵

Final Project: http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/exhibits/show/reimagining-american-life

Legacies of a Depressed Generation

What is a Legacy? A legacy is the imprint of what once was.

A Legacy is the positive impact change has on the future.

For My Project I chose to do a case study of Prince William Forest Park, and its narrative and it’s place within the 1930’s. Through the lens of a place-based narrative the cultural changes and cultural limitations are given a name and a face. With Place Based Narratives the effects of prejudice and change are shown as widespread and viable.

To tell this story I chose to use a map, a timeline, image annotation, and my original Place Based Narrative. I chose to use the Map because spatial awareness brings into picture the limits of people. Raw data is not enough to demonstrate the effects. I used a timeline because timelines put the narrative into real time perspective. It particularly highlighted how abrupt the economic collapse was, and it how long the pollution of the pyrite mine sight lasted. I chose the image annotation because as the viewer is reading through the American Guide Series page, I can narrate the historical importance of the page. It allows for the historian to draw average viewers into a historical source using historical thought. I used my original Place Based Narrative because this Park is also a personal community memory for me. There is no better way to show how important a place is than with a personal experience. All of these digital resources transform the data into easily consumable information, and makes it viable for widespread understanding. History is to be lived, and these tools allow for average people, who are not historians, to live history. These tools add to the historical method through drawing people into the history itself.

I did not know much about the 1930’s when we started. Sure, I knew general information on FDR and the Federal One Project, but all I knew was vague. I knew about the destitute culture from the Grapes of Wrath. I knew of the Federal Theatre Project and its Communist ties through a Theatre Class, but I did not understand the depth of the issues that the Federal One Projects took on. The Federal Writers Project sought to create the American Guide Series that increased employment for writers¹ through collaboration with local and federal perspectives created a positive tourist resource.² The themes of mobility and value of movement within the 1930s highlights the hopes of the people. It may not be so great where they were, but maybe on the other side of the country they have work. ³ Then underlying all these social issues the Long Civil Rights Movement is trudging through the depression, and African-Americans are treated worse than ever. The case of the Scottsboro boys breaks my heart. The lack of critical consideration and disregard for human life astounds me.⁴

People today take history for granted, but people particularly take the 1930’s developments for granted. The 30’s was a hard time For African-Americans, but the strides taken by many during that time set up the change to come in the 1960s. The Federal One Projects have a direct impact on our everyday life in the 21st century, and my projects scope gives life to that change. Every project the Cultural New Deal took upon themselves had a return investment, and continues to have a return investment. The Recreation District Areas, RDA’s, are now National Parks, and these are considered a national treasure. The foundation the Cultural New Deal laid began a much of the American image we hold onto today. Every culture has its roots in history.

Now with what I know about History, and how people can use their time to change and build communities; I know to question everything, even the things no one else has the guts to question. Algorithms, Aka opinionated math, has whittled its way into the minds of people as “TRUTH.” People are consistently being disadvantaged because of unfair algorithms, but people have done little to rewrite them.⁵ This course has shown me how to remain confident in the face of digital ethical discussions.

But most of all, I know to hope for the future, because when a depressed generation bands together they can leave a Legacy of a beautiful future.

The WPA: Defining American Culture and Parting Thoughts

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

Starting this class I was worried that I would be unable to keep up with the technical aspects. As a historian I knew that there is an ever growing world of digital humanities and I didn’t even realize that I was a consumer of digital history. I have found that as a budding archivist there is a great deal of knowledge packed away in digital archives. ¹

Through this class I gained confidence in my technical abilities and learned just how valuable and relevant digital humanities can be. Combing through the digital collections of the Library of Congress I learned a great deal about the New Deal. I knew that FDR pulled America out of the depths of the despair in the Great Depression, but I didn’t realize how the New Deal encompassed all types of occupations. ².

I rooted my final exhibit around the way that the Works Progress Administration had an official mission as essentially a large scale employment agency. ³ However, in an unofficial capacity it set out to establish a national identity and define what it meant to be American. ⁴

I decided to look at the different ways that the WPA was documenting the American people or “the folk”. I really liked seeing the different ways that the WPA worked and how they made a difference to the American people and way of life. In my exhibit I highlighted the Federal Writer’s Project, Federal Theatre Project, Farm Security Administration, and Federal Music Project. I tried to show the diverse ways that the WPA defined what it meant to be American. Before this class I knew that the New Deal was an effort by FDR to put people back to work, but seeing the ways that people from all walks of life were included was fascinating. I knew nothing about the Federal One Project before this class. Learning how they recorded and documented American culture all over the country in so many different ways was important to support my argument. As a result, I feel like I have a better comprehension of the New Deal and the time period it encompassed.

As a historian and prospective archivist I am much more comfortable with old paper than I am with new technology. I found that through this class and my blog research I recognized digital humanities tools in the real world. I found the Knightlabs tools to be really helpful in expressing complex ideas with interesting and engaging ways. In my exhibit I chose to incorporate the mapping, timeline and soundcite tools. I really liked how they were interactive and invited the viewer or reader into the material. I personally encountered some of the Knightlabs tools in the “wild” so to speak. ⁵Because I had worked with the timeline previously I was able to better investigate the material in the article I found.

The other Knightlabs tool that I really liked, even though it was buggy and difficult to work with was SoundCite. I discussed Sidney Robertson Cowell and the work she did in California recording the folk music of migrants. ⁶ I was able to match portraits with the recordings she made and it really brought the immigrants stories to life, using the story map also illustrated the North Carolina tour I chose really well.

Overall, I learned that even if I don’t have plans to go into digital history it really behooves me to learn about how digital historians are using DH tools to bring history to the world in engaging and interesting ways. It also helps to have a working technical knowledge of these tools as they can carry over into other real world experiences. I became much more confident in my technological skills and gained a wealth of knowledge about the New Deal.