Between Public History and Geohistory: Teaching From, and About, Lost Urban Landscapes
Start Date
15-10-2014 10:15 AM
End Date
15-10-2014 12:15 PM
Description
This paper describes “Curating the City”, an experimental undergraduate seminar, and nascent digital humanities project, at Franklin & Marshall College. The project is undertaken in collaboration with the Phillips Museum of Art, the Lancaster County Historical Society, a Lancaster-based urban planning firm, and a cohort of users active on Lancaster Facebook sites. In it, student curators research different parts of the city of Lancaster, focusing on changing urban forms shaped over time by economic forces and social relations. Designed to give students an immersive experience in research methods central to the writing of public history and urban history, the seminar integrates traditional research methods with the evolving idioms of digital technologies and social media to help students learn to “read space” and thus visualize historic environments. As an on-line exhibition, “Curating the City” reintroduces that environment to city residents and visitors via an on-line platform. This paper describes both the process of “curating the city” and concludes with a discussion of the potentialities, challenges, and unanticipated outcomes of this mode of teaching and presenting student work.
Type
Demonstration
Session
#s4: Digital Space, Place, and the Public Humanities, chair Janine Glathar
Language
eng
Location
Elaine Langone Center, Walls Lounge
Between Public History and Geohistory: Teaching From, and About, Lost Urban Landscapes
Elaine Langone Center, Walls Lounge
This paper describes “Curating the City”, an experimental undergraduate seminar, and nascent digital humanities project, at Franklin & Marshall College. The project is undertaken in collaboration with the Phillips Museum of Art, the Lancaster County Historical Society, a Lancaster-based urban planning firm, and a cohort of users active on Lancaster Facebook sites. In it, student curators research different parts of the city of Lancaster, focusing on changing urban forms shaped over time by economic forces and social relations. Designed to give students an immersive experience in research methods central to the writing of public history and urban history, the seminar integrates traditional research methods with the evolving idioms of digital technologies and social media to help students learn to “read space” and thus visualize historic environments. As an on-line exhibition, “Curating the City” reintroduces that environment to city residents and visitors via an on-line platform. This paper describes both the process of “curating the city” and concludes with a discussion of the potentialities, challenges, and unanticipated outcomes of this mode of teaching and presenting student work.