Benjamin Ostermeier | Building an Inclusive Digital Local History in the Midwest
Channel: MSU Digital Humanities
Date: 2020-04-24

Benjamin Ostermeier | Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

Slides and text of the talk are available at http://benostermeier.com/globaldh2020
Project website: madison-historical.siue.edu

Presentation Description: 

Since 2016, the history department and the IRIS Digital Humanities Center at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville have documented the history and culture of Madison County, Illinois with Madison Historical. This website has told the county’s history through online encyclopedia articles, digital artifacts, and oral histories created in partnership with local museums, historical societies, libraries, and other community members.

I have served as the project’s tech developer from its inception and played a role in project planning. In this presentation, I discuss how the digital project has replicated unequal power dynamics in the county and how we and community members have attempted to challenge these dynamics. Traditional local history is typically celebratory, highlighting the achievements of “prominent” citizens to manufacture community identity and pride, often at the expense of people of color, immigrants, and other marginalized groups. While many of our community partners have made efforts to move past this tradition, a degree of community boosterism persists in maintaining socio-economic hierarchies. As a result, Madison Historical has struggled to find artifacts and written sources related to, for example, race relations or immigrant narratives. Instead of institutions, we have found these stories in oral histories, where citizens have given direct accounts of their experiences, including working for a glass factory as a woman of color, having to avoid a sundown town as a black child, and carrying on cultural traditions as a third-generation Macedonian American. Unlike digitized museum documents, oral histories empower participants with explicit control over their story and the right to refuse to publish it online. However, while oral histories are more effective in telling diverse stories, they can become exploitative and cannot generate intergroup conversations on their own. I conclude with ideas on how the project can leverage community interactions to create a more socially just digital space moving forward.

For more information about the 2020 Global DH Symposium visit msuglobaldh.org.