Exploring social change, promoting social justice
One of the first classes you take as a public history major is centered around how history should be practiced with a public audience in mind. The basic idea is that public history is interactive: the people who see your work are just as much a part of the story as the subjects are. Seems … Continue reading "Designing History": How should we present the past?
I have been involved with the Digital Harrisburg Initiative since January of 2018 and have had the opportunity to be involved in may different projects. Most of the writing I've been asked to do has been very independent (minus a few edits in post-production). Over the past year, however, I was able to contribute to … Continue reading Learning to "Do History": Lessons in Collaborative Research and Writing
The team of students and faculty at Messiah College's branch of the Digital Harrisburg Initiative have been hard at work for the past few months on a variety of different projects. Our on-going involvement in the Look Up, Look Out campaign and Commonwealth Monument project allows many different students to lend their voices to important … Continue reading New History: Updates on Digital Harrisburg
At the end of the fall semester of my sophomore year of college, I was told that through my current internship I would be able to research and write for a monument that would later be installed in the Pennsylvania State Capitol Building. Without hesitation I accepted, but as the exhibit developed it became a … Continue reading My First Job as a Digital Historian
Recently the Digital Harrisburg team have been looking for photos to pair with the stories written for the Look Up Look Out campaign. These stories are the culmination of months of research dedicated to the residents and businesses of 8th Ward before its destruction in the early 1900s. Despite work done by Stephanie Patterson Gilbert … Continue reading Picturing People from the Past
When researching for a history project, one can run into a lot of inconsistencies that make collecting any kind of data difficult. We expect the things we find to hand us information that correlates with our theories, but it's hardly ever that easy. In order to get a realistic perspective from the artifact, one has … Continue reading Looking into the Old 8th Ward
So many people have asked me why in the world I chose to study history. Usually I just take it in stride, tell them that everyone is different, and move on. It wasn't until I spent a month doing intense research, getting very little sleep, trying to understand the changes that occurred in turn of … Continue reading Looking Back on Digital History
Not many cities are able to make the kind of turn around Harrisburg, Pennsylvania pulled off between 1900 and 1930. This town that started as a tiny grouping of houses on the east bank of the Susquehanna River was able to revamp its image and become the center of national attention within 3 decades. The … Continue reading Harrisburg 1900-1930: From Industrial Blight to Shining New Metropolis
Harrisburg has been the state capital of Pennsylvania since 1812, but has had its fair share of ups and downs in city appeal. Nearing the end of the 19th century, the town was at a crossroads. After a brief period of industrial boom in the steel business, it had lost its luster and looked nothing … Continue reading Digitizing City Beautiful: Remaking Harrisburg and its History
Ever since I could remember, I’ve always been a history buff. Something about telling people’s stories and learning more about the human experience has kept me fascinated for years. As I’ve gotten older, the sheer complexity of human history and what we as a society stand to learn from it continues to astound me. There … Continue reading Rediscovering the Digital Side of History
