Part One:
In the first week of this course, I learned a great deal of context. The context for this course included a basic understanding of the setting for the New Deal, the cultural associations that were established as a part of the New Deal, and developed a broader definition of “technology”. Furthermore, I received a crash course in the relevant technologies and concepts that led to the development of our modern digital age.
While I had a basic understanding of what the New Deal was and had a basic understanding of its broader effects on American society, I was completely unaware that the New Deal had any pronounced cultural effects. The discussion in the course so far has enlightened me regarding the different public arts programs that were established as a part of the New Deal. The intention of these public arts programs was twofold. After the economic atrocity of the Great Depression, many artists needed work. So, public programs put artists back to work, and allowed them the opportunity to create again. Additionally, the production of art, such as theater, and music, provided a distraction for all Americans. When consuming the arts, people were less likely to dwell on what they had lost in the preceding years.
Part Two:
For the next part of the assignment, I was assigned to review “Media and The Movement”, which examines how the media covered the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. In Miriam Posner’s framework, Media and the Movement would be classified as a multimedia narrative. The project combines longform academic writing with oral histories, feature-length films, and radio broadcasts. The sources in this project are numerous and diverse. They include films/videos, recordings, photographs, and text documents or artifacts. Most of the sources are processed by being photographed or scanned, or in some otherway digitized in order to be uploaded to the webpage. Finally, the sources are presented in a way to be easily accessible on the web and able to be observed by visitors. The digital nature of this project enhances the efficacy of the project’s sources. By presenting primary sources in line with appropriate context, individuals are able to learn in more ways than one, and see first hand what the historian is trying to convey.
References
Dauterive, Jessica. (2019, August 27). What is Digital Humanities?Retrieved from https://slides.com/jdauteri/what-is-digital-humanities#/1.
Davis, Joshua Clark & Kotch, Seth. Media and the Movement. Retrieved from http://mediaandthemovement.unc.edu/
Posner, Miriam. (2019, August 28). How Did They Make That? Retrieved from http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/exhibits/show/fall-2019/dh.
