Public History and Digital Humanities

This semester, students in my Introduction to Public History course will be developing short documentary videos to accompany oral histories that UCF’s Veterans Legacy Project VLP team members have conducted with Vietnam War veterans.   In preparation for beginning this group project, I am currently reading Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, viewing Ken Burns’ multi-episode documentary on the Vietnam War, and viewing a selection of VLP interviews with Vietnam War veterans, which are available on the Library of Congress website. Through my initial reading and viewing, I have been shocked to realize the extent of my lack of knowledge about the Vietnam War, even as a history MA student focusing on US history.  (I found that I knew some background information about efforts to protest the Vietnam War, but minimal knowledge about the war itself!) I also have had surprisingly little connection to the war in my personal life, despite the fact that my parents (and presuma...

In the introduction to Dr. Bill Ferster’s book Interactive Visualizations , he provides a number of strategies to help me answer my research questions, and do so in a compelling manner by “letting primary sources of information communicate directly with [the] viewer.” (1)  My project most closely reflects Ferster’s observation that “historians use visualization to explain and further explore what people do.” (4)  In my case, I am seeking to explain where the citizens of Eatonville carried out the various components of their lives, and how these locations changed over time.  My project will allow users to more easily “understand complex and multidimensional relationships, prompting connections that may not have been otherwise apparent.” (9)   For example, by layering historic maps over contemporary ones, users will be able to trace connections between past and present in new ways.  I do not yet know which platfom I will be using for my project, but I kno...

In this post, I will provide a status report and general update on my class project, which is tentatively titled “Space and Community in Eatonville, Florida.”  (It’s not a very jazzy title, so I will need to find a way to make it more interesting and pull in the user!) Through this project, I will use wide-ranging data sources to build upon previous mapping projects in order to develop an interactive map that shows how domestic and community spaces have changed over time in the historically African American town of Eatonville, Florida.  I envision multiple audiences for this project, from the general public, to Eatonville residents, to researchers seeking insight into the work of Zora Neale Hurston, who spent her childhood in Eatonville and used the town as a subject and inspiration for much of her writing.  Ideally, the map will serve as the basis for a future walking tour of the town of Eatonville, which would be accessible via a mobile app.  Using VisalEyes, I wil...

When developing a digital project, it is important to survey the existing landscape by conducting what Dr. Sheila Brennan, a digital historian at the National Endowment for the Humanities, calls an "environmental scan," or "a literature review that demonstrates your knowledge of existing projects and the field's reaction to those efforts."  For my project, I will be using Google Maps to develop a map that will document and guide users through the history of domestic and community spaces in Eatonville, Florida, so I began my scan by seeking out historic mapping projects that utilize Google Maps.  It was difficult to find many robust, active projects that use Google Maps to document historic locations, and even more difficult to find scholarly projects.  Most of the projects I found were either skeletal or abandoned efforts taken on by small municipalities.  Two examples of these are maps developed by the town of Princeton, Wisconsin (https://www.cityofprinceto...

In his book Interactive Visualization: Insight through Inquiry (2013), Dr. Bill Ferster describes a six-pronged model for guiding the development of interactive visualizations.  The model follows the acronym ASSERT, which stands for: A - Ask a Question S - Search for Information S - Structure that Information E - Envision the Answer R - Represent the Visualization T - Tell a Story I will outline how I have used this model to structure my class project on mapping and guiding users through a history of domestic and community spaces in Eatonville, Florida.  It should be noted that although I will move through each letter sequentially in order of its position in the acronym, it is not strictly necessary to go in this order when formulating a project plan, as Ferster notes that the ASSERT model “should be thought of more as a web or circle and less as a straight line” (Ferster, 42).  A - Ask a Question Ferster observes that “Good visualizations are driven ...