The Pathways to Freedom Digital Narrative Project

FAIN: HD-51531-12

Long Island University (Greenvale, NY 11548-1300)
Deborah Mutnick (Project Director: October 2011 to April 2014)

The planning and alpha-level prototyping of a web and mobile-based resource that would facilitate public access to digital content on the African-American Civil Rights Movement created by collaborative, interdisciplinary teams of undergraduate students.

The digital content created by Pathways to Freedom students and faculty will feature a variety of media, artifacts, and documents with a primary focus on local civil rights oral histories mapped to archival documents and specific Brooklyn locations. It will be produced by undergraduate students and their professors in Pathways to Freedom as well as undergraduate and graduate Computer Science and/or Media Arts students, with the support of faculty and IT specialists, and will have enduring value to the academic and broader public, including middle and high school groups as well as other college students. Through an innovative use of existing digital tools and technologies, the prototype will combine oral history interviews with images of archival documents and interactive maps, enabling those artifacts to be seamlessly integrated on a variety of platforms including the Internet, a digital repository, and mobile devices.

Associated Products

Toward a Twenty-First Century Federal Writers' Project (Article)
Title: Toward a Twenty-First Century Federal Writers' Project
Author: Deborah Mutnick
Abstract: ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????This article draws parallels between the Great Depression and the Great Recession in light of the history, methods, themes, and relevance of the New Deal Federal Writers' Project to contemporary community writing. Based on a critical analysis of the FWP's legacy as the sponsor of a twentieth century American epic in the state guides and its powerful, if flawed, methodologies, I suggest that a 21st century reprise of the FWP would support already existing university-community partnerships like Long Island University's Pathways to Freedom Digital Narrative Project and support the creation of new ones, thus enacting the "public turn" called for in composition and other disciplines at a critical juncture in American--and world--history. ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ????????????????????????????
Year: 2014
Primary URL: http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/CE/0772-nov2014/CE0772Toward.pdf
Access Model: Subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: College English
Publisher: National Council of Teachers of English

The Rhetorics of Race and Racism: Teaching Writing in an Age of Colorblindness (Article)
Title: The Rhetorics of Race and Racism: Teaching Writing in an Age of Colorblindness
Author: Deborah Mutnick
Abstract: Intensifying economic stratification and racism in the U.S. signify capitalism’s deepening contradictions and its inability to realize fundamental promises of equality and democracy. In this article, I argue that the rhetoric of race is a particularly resonant theme for college writing instruction because it lays bare the relations of production that account for disparities of wealth and power. Given the defining role of race and racism in U.S. history, I ask first-year composition students to analyze archival bills of sale for enslaved people in Kings County (Brooklyn) in relation to the assertion that “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence and then to explore the aftermaths of slavery in the 20th century through the Pathways to Freedom Digital Narrative Project mobile app.
Year: 2015
Primary URL: http://licsjournal.org/OJS/index.php/LiCS/article/view/66
Access Model: Open access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Literacy in Composition Studies
Publisher: Literacy in Composition Studies

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