Remixing Rural Texas: Local Texts, Global Context

FAIN: HD-51398-11

Texas A & M University, Commerce (Commerce, TX 75428-4311)
Shannon Carter (Project Director: March 2011 to August 2013)

The development of a prototype for facilitating the "remixing" of various types of digitized primary sources for Web presentations on the history of race and race relations in rural Texas.

Remixing Rural Texas (RRT) prototype frames critical race narratives in rural, northeast Texas by bringing together archival research methods with three traditions increasingly common in the Digital Humanities: aggregation, remixing, and geomapping tools. RRT is both expository and participatory in nature. Expository aspects feature video documentaries remixed almost entirely from existing local history collections illustrating the convergence of geographical, temporal, political, and economic factors in shifting critical race narratives across local landscapes by foregrounding tensions surrounding local texts and contexts with global implications. The participatory role invites and guides research, community and student participants in collecting, remixing, and likewise framing additional critical race narratives of their own. Level I grant will fund the expository portion of RRT leading to a Level II grant application to support the participatory role to build from prototype.