Did you send an email to a friend or family member on September 11th? In the hours and days following the attacks, more than 100 million Americans did. As with so many materials registering the social and cultural experiences of ordinary Americans in the past, however, this ephemeral digital record might slip away from us, even after the passage of only a year. Responding to that possibility, ASHP/CML and the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University created the September 11 Digital Archive (https://911digitalarchive.org/), a permanent digital repository about the attacks and the public reaction to them. Since its March launch, the Archive has accessioned a diverse collection of over 30,000 contributions, ranging from chat room discussions to interviews with Arab-Americans. In turn, the Archive’s website – which presents a significant fraction of the project’s collection–routinely receives two and half million visits a week, making it one of the most embraced noncommercial locations on the Internet. The project’s staff hopes to cast their archival nets broadly by employing new digital tools, creating a record that will allow the history of the attacks and their aftermath to be told “from the bottom up.”

Collaborating closely with national and local institutions—including the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History and National Public Radio—the Archive has become the repository of choice for the vast digital record precipitated by September 11th. The Archive’s collection has received extensive national and international media coverage, including reports by CNN, New York One, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, El Diario, Mexico’s Univista Television, and 218 local newspapers.

Perhaps some of the most compelling material in the Archive’s holdings are the computer animations and digitally manipulated imagery Americans crafted on their home computers in the wake of 9/11. The project’s director, Fritz Umbach, describes these expressions of public sentiment as digital folk art. “They really do fit all the classic criteria for folk art,” Umbach reports, “they were created for non-commercial reasons, and distributed by non-commercial means. And in many ways, these creations encapsulate the rawness and immediacy of the public reaction.”

In the past few years, master teachers of our NYC Making Connections program have been working with ASHP/CML educators to adapt some of our resources for ESL students. Based on four video documentaries, an ESL curriculum packet for secondary school humanities classrooms will be available in the fall. The packet includes adaptations of four video viewers’ guides: Daughters of Freemen, Five Points, 1877: The Grand Army of Starvation, and Up South. In addition, instructional techniques for advancing students’ literacy skills were developed on a range of topics covered in the videos including, immigration/migration, labor, industrialization, urban life, and race.

October 4-5, 2002

National Council for History Education

Discovering History Conference

Saratoga Springs, NY

ASHP/CML will present with the Brooklyn Museum of Art a report on a collaborative curriculum development and teacher training program funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Using the museum’s American paintings and decorative arts collection and ASHP/CML materials, the project focused on the development of interdisciplinary classroom lessons for use in secondary school humanities classrooms. Participants will gain insight into innovative teaching strategies that integrate a critical approach to primary source analysis. The resource guide will be sold at the conference. For more information about the conference see: www.history.org/nche.

Monday, October 28, 2002, 6-8PM

CUNY Graduate Center, Room 9206

The Center for Media and Learning and the Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center host a conversation among scholars to explore the ways that Americans do—and do not—understand the cultures, histories, and politics of the region defined as the Middle East. What role do cultural productions play in shaping American understandings of the Middle East? What about Americans’ claims to natural resources there and perceptions of the region as the birthplace of three major religions? How has the growth of the Middle Eastern diaspora in the U.S. and the ways that Middle Eastern immigrants and Americans of Middle Eastern descent have negotiated their dual national identities shaped American perceptions of the Middle East?

Participants include:

Melani McAllister, Assistant Professor of American Studies at The George Washington University and the author of Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000.

Ammiel Alcalay is Professor of Classical, Middle Eastern, and Asian Languages at Queens College, CUNY, and author of After Jews and Arabs: Remaking Levantine Culture and Memories of Our Future.

Moustafa Bayoumi (Moderator), Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Brooklyn College, CUNY, and co-editor of The Edward Said Reader.

This program is part of the 2002 State Humanities Month, a celebration sponsored each October by the New York Council for the Humanities.

Friday, October 4, 2002, 10AM to 1PM

Graduate Center

Friday, November 15, 2002, 10AM to 1PM

Hostos Community College

Participate in an interdisciplinary dialogue about the “best practices” for integrating visual evidence, new media resources, and active learning pedagogy into classrooms where U.S. history and culture are taught.

Contact: DThompson@gc.cuny.edu