The Center for Mason Legacies (CML) is pleased to have been invited to participate in the 2021 Conference on Community Writing, organized by the Coalition for Community writing. For this year’s theme, “Weaving Narratives for Social Justice Action in the Local, National, Global,” George Oberle (CML director), Anne Dobberteen (CML graduate research assistant, Alyssa Fahringer (digital scholarship consultant and affiliated faculty), and Anthony Guidone (CML graduate research assistant) created a recorded presentation on “Digital Initiatives at the Center for Mason Legacies” (available here in our institutional repository).
As the co-presenters write in their abstract, “Who writes history? Who is history written for? How is it accessed, and how can it become more accessible to local communities?” In their discussion, they highlight the community aspects of all digital initiatives created by CML and how important our local history is in relation to our national history.
At CML, we believe that history writing need not be limited to traditional print monographs but might instead be practiced on more inclusive and accessible digital platforms. In this way, history that is hidden in dusty old account books or made contemporaneously at protests digitally becomes part of how not only academics but also students, individuals, and community members engage with history.
We invited you to watch the presentation and explore two of the projects highlighted – the Mason Account book and Black Lives Next Door.
October 25, 2021