Recovering Auraria's Past: Building a Digital Tour of a Displaced Neighborhood and Reckoning with Campus History

FAIN: AA-289919-23

University of Colorado, Denver (Aurora, CO 80045-2571)
Rachel Sarah Gross (Project Director: May 2022 to present)
Michelle Comstock (Co Project Director: August 2022 to present)
Cameron Blevins (Co Project Director: August 2022 to present)

A three-year grant to create digital and curricular materials related to the university’s development and impact on its neighborhood.

Recovering Auraria's Past is a three-year collaborative project with faculty and community members designed to collect, organize, and share existing course materials and research on the history of the Auraria neighborhood in Denver, Colorado. The current Auraria campus in downtown was built in the 1970s through the razing of a Chicano neighborhood and the displacement of over 300 families. This project examines the lasting impact of this displacement at its 50-year anniversary by creating a website that includes primary and secondary documents along with syllabi and lesson plans available to instructors across three campuses. The project will take on additional collecting work, including oral histories and culminate with a digital tour of campus that focuses on displaced Chicano community members. It will also include a faculty and graduate student reading club and lecture series welcoming scholars who address the racial reckoning on American university campuses.