Christina David – The Digital Past Course Blog

Final Exhibit

http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/exhibits/show/what-did-the-ex-slave-narrativ

For this final exhibit, I used some of the tools that I’ve found most useful throughout this class which resulted in me using Voyant Tools, TimelineJS, and soundcite. These tools allowed me to interact with the material in an engaging way and I was able to better visualize the historical content from the 1930’s. Not only was I able to learn how to work with different tools on the internet, I was able to both see and hear the content of the 1930’s.

I’m not much of a history person myself, but once I had to learn history along with the online tools, the history aspect became much more interesting. Being able to incorporate history into online tools makes it easier to understand the material. The digital humanities taught me that the content that is being put online is not completely unbiased because the person who created the source or even just the algorithm¹has created it in a specific way based in their own personal beliefs and bias².

Throughout the class I learned that coding is actually pretty fun, even if it is just using shortcode for footnotes. I never thought that I would enjoy using coding so much, but it’s actually really helpful in understanding how websites work and online tools work and can be beneficial to understanding things such as history. With that being said, I truly feel like I have a better grasp on what life was like during the 1930’s. The ex-slave narratives ³alone actually helped me understand how important the New Deal Projects were in America. Americans had a cultural revolution in the 1930’s. The Great Depression ⁴ was an awful event that impacted Americans all over the country. However, this prompted them to create and develop American culture at a faster rate than ever before. They had folk songs and new projects that encapsulated the lives of Americans. The ex-slave narratives shed light on how different some Americans lives were to one another, yet we’re all blended together to make this country.

I chose to write about the ex-slave narratives because it seemed to impact culture more than others from the Federal Writers Project, or even from the other New Deal projects themselves. It allows those whose voices were unheard for so long to be heard. Racial stigma against African Americans were still prevalent during the 1930’s, but I feel as if the ex-slave narratives helped step overcome racial bias in America because it was giving African Americans a voice, one that had previously been taken away from them.

America has developed its culture over and over again since the 1930’s, but I’d say that one of the most revolutionary times is during the New Deal era because it was not only a cultural revolution, but a technological revolution as well. Audio recordings were used for the ex-slave narratives which allowed us to actually hear what the interviewers as well as the interviewees sounded like. We have access to folk songs and good photographs. Because of the technology, the present day can understand what life was like in the 1930’s we are actually able to witness, visually and audibly, the change in culture during that time.

The Effect of the Federal Writers Project on American Culture

The Federal Writers Project worked hard to promote and represent the cultural diversity that is present in the United States. The writers that worked on the project made it a goal to showcase those who are underrepresented and discriminated against in the United States.

Let’s start off with something as simple as writing about food. In the project known as “America Eats,⁵” the authors wrote about different food cultures around the U.S. in order to represent the different food pathways of America and to discover if there are actual “American foods.” In doing this, they discovered that much of the underrepresented cuisines, most namely African American and Mexican cuisines, were quite delicious.

Previously, white Americans ridiculed African American cuisine and claimed it was “primitive” and “unrefined.” However, white Americans came to learn that their food was quite delicious because it didn’t fall under their “refined” taste. They were able to create many delicious dishes ⁶ that white Americans had not even thought of.

By refined I’m assuming they mean “bland,” but I digress.

In addition to this, white Americans began to also love Mexican food because if men could handle the spice, then that was a good indicator of the manliness they had.

Secondly, one of the most prevalent and impactful projects of the FWP were the ex-slave narratives. Through this, ex-slaves were able to tell their story in a government funded project. This project revealed another cultural difference in America, the dialect⁷. The interviewers of the project had some difficulty understanding what the interviewees were saying because of the difference in speech ⁸and lack of access to a formal education.

The ex-slave narratives brought light to the lives that were underrepresented and discriminated against for hundreds of years. America was able to see what kind of lives they lived and through the audio recordings, the feeling and emotion of the interviewee comes to life.

Blog Post #8

For scholars, the archive gives much more information than just the material inside of it. When looking at an archive, the scholars must look at the framework that lies outside of the archive in order to understand the purpose of creating the archive itself. With this, there are different factors that go into creating an archive.

As I’ve come to realize, anything that lies within the digital humanities is biassed. And this means that whatever information that is put into an archive is biassed as well. Archivists must determine what goes into an archive based on its functionality and its usefulness to the archive, but how does one decide what is actually worthy of putting into an archive and what is merely discarded? For each archivist it might be different based on their own environmental factors.

Another important thing to notice about digital archives is their operating systems. “The Artifactual Elements of Born-Digital Records, Part 2⁷” gave a wonderful example of the importance of the framework of the archive. Bill Lefurgy explains that the Library of Congress recreated Thomas Jefferson’s book collection and they included the actual shelving and organization that Jefferson used. This is because the framework illustrates that Jefferson had reasoning behind his organization and unique, curved shelving units. Likewise, archivists must look at the original modeling of the item, especially if it is obsolete ⁹. Due to the archives being biassed, it is difficult to discern if the general public is getting all of the correct information that they need.

As for the Federal Theater Project, I believe that by looking through the materials for class, that I have a better understanding of why the FTP was so important for Americans. I knew that the FTP gave Americans jobs and offered some economic relief for those who were out of jobs, but it also helped stimulate American culture by using real people who had a passion for the arts. For example, many plays usually omitted large groups of minorities from being in the large scale productions, so when the all African American cast of “Macbeth” came to stage¹⁰, it was a huge deal. Minorities were being represented and passionate actors and actresses were able to showcase their talent.

The Federal Theater Project brought back authenticity. Instead of showcasing the same songs on the radio or showing the same large scale (yet probably half-hearted) productions of plays, people from the FTP were able to bring back authentic music and theater. The Federal Theater project revived the culture in America.

Blog Post #6

“How did the Federal Writers Project encapsulate and preserve the American culture?”

This is the question I want to answer and the reason being is that the New Deal projects helped shape American culture, some of which has lasted to the modern era. I believed that the answer to my question would have something to do with the ex-slave narratives that were recorded for the FWP along with the artwork and theater projects that were created during that time.

In order to find the answer, I looked through the Library of Congress with the search term “Federal Writers Project” to see what basic information I could find. I was actually able to find a source or two that related to the topic of American culture. But in order to narrow down my search, I refined the search words to “Culture and Folklore.” In doing this, I was able to find more sources related to my question¹¹.

As for my experience with “Voyant Tools¹²” it was slightly confusing and took a little bit to get used to. Using the tool that allowed me to see specific words in context was extremely helpful because then I could see exactly what was happening in the text. In using this tool, I looked up the words “culture” and “American.”

Key term search with the word “American”

When using this website, I also decided to use the entire class corpus in order to widen my search results and to give me a better idea of what impact the FWP had on American culture.

After reading some of the texts that came up with “American,” I was not surprised to find the positive outlook on American culture. Americans were referred to as “hard workers” and having a “spine.” This search does make me want to tweak my question a bit and instead ask, “How did the Federal Writers Project change the way that Americans are perceived?” or “How did the FWP help create American culture?” Many of the search results seemed very opinionated and I would like to find out what specifically caused the perception of Americans to be this way.

Overall, this close reading helped me realize that the FWP helped sort of “create” American culture and instead of asking how it preserved American culture, I should be wondering how it helped create American culture. Analyzing the text helped me identify which topics are more prevalent in the corpus and what questions could be answered based on the information given. Reading and analyzing the corpus was definitely beneficial to reshaping my question and allowed me to better grasp what effect the Federal Writers Project had on America.

Uncle Bob Ledbetter Interview

Uncle Bob Ledbetter was interviewed by John and Ruby Lomax in 1940 ¹³.This interview ¹⁴gives insight for how a slave was treated in regards to education and a personal life.

Ledbetter seemed to have difficulty with his age throughout the entire interview. He was not aware of his birthday and doesn’t know exactly how old he was when certain events happened. Ledbetter is even unaware of how old he is during the interview. He relies on what age people tell him he is, “they say I’m seventy something, two or three.”

On top of this, the interview allowed us to see the level of education that Ledbetter was able to achieve. During the interview, Ledbetter claimed that he was a “poor figurer” and unable to deduct when he was born after being told his age (which was 19) in 1880. This exemplifies that slaves could not have a decent education because Ledbetter was unable to do the subtraction to find out his age. He explains in the interview that he learned how to read and write because of being taught by his father at night, who also had no education. His way of speaking also attributes to not having a formal education as illustrated by Ledbetter’s mispronunciation of words.

The two timeline layers intersect fairly closely. Ledbetter was still enslaved when women gained the right to vote and when World War I started. He was barely freed when the Great Depression started. Ledbetter’s enslavement is more recent than historians seem to let on.

During the interview, I was surprised when Ledbetter mentioned that he joined the Church. I thought that being religious is something that’s instilled in someone from birth, inherited from family. This piece of information was probably surprising to me due to the fact that it was his choice to become religious. He made the decision and that demonstrates that he did have some say in how chose to live his life. I was also surprised that he didn’t mention any children or grandchildren, but then again he just answered the questions that the interviewer gave him.

This interview was useful in the way that it gave the listener insight into how an ex-slave grew up and the education level he/she has based on the language that person uses. However, due to the audio file being older (1940’s), I wasn’t able to understand much of what was being said due to the massive amount of white noise in the file. I gave up trying to hear what was happening in the conversation after about 5 minutes and switched to read the transcript instead. Although it’s interesting to hear the actual voice of Uncle Bob Ledbetter, it was difficult to sit through the interview because the noise was very confusing.

This interview can tells us that in the 1930’s, there were many events happening internationally (WWI), throughout the country (The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl), and for the ex-slaves themselves. The interview demonstrates that massive changes were happening in the world, and especially the nation in regards to the social climate.

Bias in Algorithms

Widely unknown to the public, search engines are extremely biassed. The algorithms that were created for these search engines typically show websites that paid to be shown first or perhaps they show websites that have been most clicked on in the past, which still doesn’t take into account the relevancy of the information.

The algorithms of search engines tend to present racist and sexist information about women, most namely women of color. ¹⁵ Once the term “black girls” was searched in Google in the early ’10s, hypersexualized and derogatory results came up. These results speak to the algorithm that created it, instead of showing results about famous black women throughout history or the accomplishments of these women through the years, it instead showed pornographic results which implies that these women of color are shown as objects. Algorithms are developed by humans, and this bias in search results, the racism and sexism in today’s era is still prevalent.

Today’s bias in algorithms play into the Long Civil Rights Movement, where racial and gender equality have yet to be met but are on the path to be. Back in the 1930’s, women did not have the rights that they have today. Although women were starting to join the workforce as the men were off at war, they were still seen as belonging in a domestic environment. Today, women are seen doing incredible things, they’re seen in government positions, as doctors, and soldiers. But when searching for women on the internet, objectifying results still come up. And why? It’s because of the bias in today’s society towards women which is reflected in these major algorithms.

There is a way that today’s society can combat try and combat this bias. Algorithms have to be questioned ¹⁶ and users should look at what the results cater to. Do the results cater to those who pay for advertisements? Do they cater to only one race instead of including a multitude of races? Do they present gender inequality? These questions should be asked when using a search engine. It’s important to realize that finding information does not only have to be through Google Searching. There are a wide variety of public resources such as libraries, teachers, and even online databases. In questioning the method of how search results come up and in finding other ways to research information, society can be better consumers of digital media and not give into the bias of algorithmic results.

Popular Culture Extra Credit

In today’s society, popular culture seems to glorify acting “wild” during youth, and even throughout adulthood. Songs and movies both seem to encourage people of all ages to party and behave almost chaotically as the popular song, “Wake up in the Sky” by Gucci Mane, Bruno Mars, and Kodak Black; or even in the hit movie, The Hangover, directed by Todd Phillips. This over-glorification of partying seems like pure immaturity to some people, namely older generations. However, perhaps this culture was created in order to distract the public from what was really going on in America. Isn’t that one of the reasons that American culture began to skyrocket after the Great Depression?

Popular culture seems to serve as a distraction to the public in the way that Americans can dream about partying on the weekends or running away from their life and starting new somewhere else. But due to the fact that many Americans have to work gruelling hours just to pay off loans for their houses or college debt, popular culture can only be a dream for them. This plays into the fact that mainly the upper class gets the luxury to party extravagantly. It’s so integrated into popular culture that although movies may not even be about “partying,” they still incorporate some aspect of partying into the movie so that it’s appealing to viewers. A perfect example of this would be The Interview. This movie, although it serves as a comedy, serves as a message about blindly following the government and once the people see how foolish their leader is, they can start to understand how badly that leader has been running the country. Yet the movie still contains at least two major scenes of partying montages.

And this brings me to my final point, although music can be used to distract the public from their daily lives, it’s still also used to explain the grievances the public has towards the injustice of inequality, such as the Grammy winning “This is America.” Inequality has been present in America since the Europeans came and slaughtered the actual indigenous people of this land. However, inequality seems to have taken a rise due to the fact that now America has Donald Trump for a President. He divides the country and is blatantly racist, amongst sexist and countless other things, and ineffective. The only thing he’s doing is creating a split in the country and he empowers the racists to become even more racist, which literally resulted in the rise of the KKK and the Nazis. Some artists, however, are trying to use their platform in order to combat the racism that Trump has made prevalent in today’s America such as Eminem’s Diss Track.

Overall, popular culture can serve as a distraction from the injustices of society today. After the Great Depression, President Roosevelt tried to unite the country and popular culture helped do this. Roosevelt tried to unite Americans by pitting them against the enemy during the war, the Nazis. Somehow, thanks to our discriminatory President, the Nazis are back and in this country. The amount of songs and movies that address what’s wrong with society has risen due to the fact that the government, and society as a whole, is seemingly going backwards and perhaps if these artists and movies keep addressing the injustice, people will finally begin to see that something is wrong.

Works Cited:

“George Mason University Central Authentication Service (CAS).” Central Authentication Service (CAS) – CAS – Central Authentication Service. Accessed October 9, 2019. https://www-nytimes-com.mutex.gmu.edu/2013/04/07/books/review/fear-itself-by-ira-katznelson.html.

Skill Assignment #3

For this project, I selected this image from the Library of Congress in the WPA Posters section. I liked the idea of the posters actually being relevant to the public during its era and that it could make a very interesting glitch. This poster illustrates the desire to get American citizens involved in the war effort which leads to a sense of patriotism. During the time of the poster (the early 1940’s), America was still recovering from the impact of the great depression and were still struggling to overcome the economic and societal turmoil of the Great Depression. The documentary evidence from the 1930’s is demonstrated with the preservation of this poster. Although the poster was created slightly after the ’30s, it remains true that printing items in the ’30s allowed for a wide distribution of art and even propaganda. Since the poster was a print, it was able to be better preserved than if it were a watercolor painting.

The WPA poster makes me wonder if posters like this actually inspired Americans to support the war effort or if it were something that was just casually noticed, but not necessarily taken seriously. Obviously the New Deal is seen in history books to be extremely helpful to bring America out of the Great Depression. However, during the 1930’s, did the citizens actually see the WPA posters or New Deal programs as a way to help the social and economic turmoil?

Whatever the answer may be, the poster still was created to make an impact in the way citizens could help the climate of America, just as every New Deal Program was. A printed poster actually seems revolutionary because printing these posters allowed for a faster and wider distribution of information. The posters are more engaging than the texts because the illustrations capture one’s eye as they’re supposed to for propaganda posters.

These methods of creating mass amounts of posters opposed to hand-drawn images on paper illustrate that the rise of technology and technologic mediums allow for information to be spread at a greater rate than ever before. Due to these advances, citizens could feel more connected with one another and could be more in tune with what’s going on in America.

Works Cited:

“Are You Helping? with Salvage.” HIST 390 The Digital Past: A Cultural New Deal. Omeka, October 9, 2019. http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/items/show/181.

“WPA War Poster, Glitched by Tina David.” HIST 390 The Digital Past: A Cultural New Deal. Omeka, October 9, 2019. http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/exhibits/show/wpawarposter.

Simultaneously Connecting and Disconnecting the World

Due to the increase of online databases and collections of newspaper articles and other artifacts, resources have never been easier to find. In fact, the ease of using databases allow sources to be accessed from all over the world. However, because of how easy it is to find and view these sources, researchers tend to take for granted the actual value of them.

During Tony Guidone’s presentation ¹⁷, he brought in several artifacts including a German coin and several newspaper articles from the past. He told us that the way that we interact with these coins or papers in person are different than how we would perceive them online.

Being able to actually see the details of a coin, the dirt, the corrosion, the intricacy of the design, is different than seeing a mere picture of it on the internet. Holding the artifact in one’s hand allows a greater connection to the history behind the coin. Questions can cross one’s mind as to where it has been and who this coin has encountered before. The novelty of this item just simply isn’t the same when seen online through a picture.

Likewise, the newspapers that were brought in allowed the class to get a greater feel of what was going on at the time. In an online data base, doing a simple key word search can highlight the paragraph that needs to be read while allowing the researcher to ignore everything else in the paper. Seeing a newspaper from the early to mid 20th century brings about a sense of nostalgia for the older eras. There were campaigns talking about rationing for the war and there was also an ad for a Model T¹⁸ one of the first affordable wide production cars in America. Being able to see small things like ads or rationing campaigns really allows the researcher to connect with the newspaper more.

Although seeing an artifact or other source in person is more meaningful, the practicality of being able to use sources outside of the web is low. According to Ian Milligan in an article from Project Muse ¹⁹ the increase of the citations of newspaper articles has increased dramatically since the rise of online newspaper databases. Due to this fact, it is easy to see that accessing sources online can be more practical albeit less of an experience.

Overall, digital projects can create social change by allowing information to be viewed and processed anywhere in the world. They allow artifacts to be known to not only the country it originated from, but in hundreds of other countries as well. Information can be spread, and even though some of the novelty for the item can be lost online, that does not diminish the importance of the information it displays.

Works Cited:

History.com Editors. (2010, April 26). Model T. Retrieved from https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/model-t

George Mason University Central Authentication Service (CAS). (n.d.). Retrieved from https://muse-jhu-edu.mutex.gmu.edu/article/527016

Blog Post #1

Throughout last week, I was able to have a better understanding of the importance of revolutionary technology throughout the early 20th century. Radios, televisions, and computers were starting to become more advanced which sparked a rapidly growing communication of ideas and knowledge. I learned that even though the technology that we have today seems very different from that of the early 20th century, technology was all built for the same purpose and the only difference is that in the modern era, it’s more advanced. Something else I learned that particularly piqued my interest was the advancement of AI. I was not aware that the advancements of Artificial Intelligence stemmed back all the way to the mid-twentieth century! Today, we have common AI’s such as “Siri” and “Alexa,” but back then Artificial Intelligence was not yet out for commercial use. The technology we have today has been tested and improved for decades and it’s inspiring to see how far AI’s have come.

I hope to learn more about how much technology has improved throughout the decades and I’d love to learn why some changes to technology have been made. I’d like to learn about why certain kinds of technology become obsolete and how people have learned to improve technology.

For this project, I was assigned “Performing Archive” by Jacqueline Wernimont, Kim et al. This digital humanities project takes pride in the fact that it is the “first to use an experimental new interface for Scalar” (Wernimont). In using this platform, viewers will be able to explore the website as a gallery, thus enriching the experience of the information. “Performing Archive” is an online exhibit that aims to display and analyze the photographs in the set the “Vanishing Race” shot by Edward S. Curtis. The photographs were taken by Mr. Curtis whereas the analytical excerpts of his work, most notably from newspapers and journals, have been collected from various scholarly libraries.

This exhibit was processed by categorizing one to three photos of similar nature along with the critiques about the photos and Curtis’s work as a whole, which included morality and authenticity. Along with this, the chronological life of Edward S. Curtis is explained throughout the entirety of the exhibit starting with his birth in the first section of the exhibit, and ending with his death in the last section.

“Performing Archive” is presented as an exhibit with a very straightforward pathway as it numbers off the links to go through in the Introduction. It allows for a very museum-like feel because of how you can only look at 1-3 pictures and the background story of those pictures on each page. Each page of the gallery has its own name in order to emphasize the subject of that page. The website is relatively interactive which allows for the brain to be more stimulated compared to if one were just merely scrolling through the pictures and articles.

Works Cited:

Wernimont, Jacqueline, et al. “Visualizing the ‘Vanishing Race’: the Photogravures of Edward S. Curtis.” Performing Archive, scalar.usc.edu/works/performingarchive/visualizingvanishingraceexhibit?path=intro.

Posner, Miriam. “How did they make that?” UCLA Digital Humanities. http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/exhibits/show/fall-2019/dh