This past Friday, we visited the digital scholarship cohort at Lafayette College. Interacting with the students reinforced the idea of collaboration within the field of digital humanities. It was really useful to hear what technical tools they’d used, or about the methodology they used to carry out their project. I was particularly thrilled to learn that one of the students had a project that very nearly matched mine, and that we shared some of the same research limitations. Also, it was interesting compare and contrast the Lafayette student’s interests and college experiences with our own. I’m excited to remain in contact with them and expand the networks we set up.
The fact that a student at the first college we contacted had a project much like yours makes me think that maybe there’s a similar project at MOST colleges… and THAT is interesting! There may be power in collating these stories.
What secondary sources have you found that cover student activism on college and university campuses? (In other words, who else might already have collated some stories gleaned from primary sources?)
Be sure to keep in touch with students you connected with. It would be great to link to each others’ projects, and also think about the possibility of a student social justice movement history commons that could bring all sorts of projects like this together in one place. It could almost be a social/crowdsourced platform for people involved in SJMs in college to share stories, documents, etc.