I began working with Digital Harrisburg in September of last year and I was quickly immersed in the world of Digital History. Though I was able to adjust and become acquainted with the work I was doing, as an English major, the practices of digital history were skills that I mostly learned on the fly. … Continue reading Learning to Uncover Truth in Digital History
The Endless Depth of Digital History My name is Grace and I am a senior history major with a concentration in public history at Messiah College. I am originally from Chico, California (about an hour and a half north of Sacramento) but last year my family relocated across the country to the lovely Berkshire County … Continue reading Encountering History in the Digital Age
It's been some time since our last general update on the Digital Harrisburg Initiative, but that is not for lack of trying. Over the last year, in fact, our operation at Messiah College has grown, and our teams have been buzzing in activities, projects, digital tools, meetings, research, and public collaborations with community partners. It's … Continue reading Digital Harrisburg Initiative: March 2020 Update
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?
Unbelievably, it seems to be the end of the 2019 fall semester. September seems to have turned into December at a whirlwind pace. As the year comes to a close, I'd like to take a moment and reflect on my time on the Digital Harrisburg working group. The first thing that I quickly realized was … Continue reading Reflecting on a Semester Spent With Digital Harrisburg
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
Last Sunday my friend Andre Frueh and I jumped in the car and drove twenty minutes from Messiah to the steps of the Harrisburg Capitol. We parked on the street by a meter, where parking is free on Sunday. We may be budding historians, but that doesn't mean we aren't on a budget. Our reason … Continue reading Story Mapping Harrisburg’s Old Eighth Ward with ArcGIS
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
As the Capitol building was erected The Old Eighth Ward, a culturally rich area mostly populated by immigrants and minorities was torn down to make space. The narrative cast painted The Old Eighth as a place of vice. Destroying it was justified because it was believed to be a seedy crime hub, a place not worth saving. The goal of this project is to restore life to a place that it was taken from.
The most recent issue of ShowcaseNow! Magazine features a nice little piece by Lenwood Sloan about the Look Up and Look Out campaign which will tell the stories of the Old Eighth Ward between 1870 and 1920. We expect to launch that officially with posters and webpages in the next couple of weeks. In the … Continue reading Look Up, Look Out: Time Travel to the Old 8th Ward
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