Voice of a Nation: Mapping Documentary Expression in New Deal America

FAIN: FEL-262865-19

Lauren Tilton
University of Richmond (Richmond, VA 23173-0001)

Preparation of an open access digital publication on the history of the Southern Life History Project.

"Voice of a Nation: Mapping Documentary Expression in New Deal America" is a digital public humanities publication that recovers the history of the Southern Life History Project (SLHP) by foregrounding how computational methods—spatial analysis, textual analysis and interactive visualizations—enable scholarship on how a new method of documentary expression called “life histories” shaped cultural belonging. The results demonstrate an entangled story about how life histories produced public memory; the role that gender and genre played in negotiating the methods that became oral history; and the ways this genre of social documentary helped to reshape notions of what it meant to be American during a time of political, social and economic unrest. The publication places visualizations and text in conversation in order to reframe the politics of representation in New Deal America while utilizing emerging interactive digital methods for conveying scholarly knowledge and arguments.