If you would have told me a couple months ago that I would be building a website, I would’ve probably laughed. I have the utmost respect for people who work in computer programming, software, web-design, etc., but I also know my place as a scholar and that’s as an essay-writing, theory-reading, English major whose most creative project was a non-fiction short story about her mom’s best friend.  A few months ago I would’ve probably asked you, “What’s a ‘digital humanities’?”

All this is to say, my experience on this project has definitely opened my eyes. While I still love traditional humanities methodology, there is something really compelling about the Digital Humanities–for me, probably the idea of projects rather than papers, and the possibility of sharing ideas at a level beyond you and your professor or you and your classmates.

My project is nowhere near being done, but considering what I started with–an empty page painted by a theme I didn’t really care for–I’ve come a long way. My main focus so far has been on appearance and functionality, involving heavy manipulation of codes I had never even heard of before. I’ve been working closely with my supervisors to change a lot of the elements that make me unhappy and I’ve learned a lot about what elements work for web design and which don’t. I’ve also been picking up on the coding language. Now, things that would’ve taken me several days to accomplish only take a couple of hours.

This is an example of a page I’ve been working on. A few months ago, I wouldn’t have put much thought into what it takes to achieve this. I would have taken it for granted. To get to this point took hours of digitizing files, cropping and straightening images, transcribing captions, fiddling with the CSS, playing around with the PHP, and countless trials and errors. And then of course there was the occasional aggressive sip of water and the $1.50 investment in stress-relief chocolate from the library vending machine.

I think the biggest take away has been the realization that it’s one thing to want something for your website, but it’s another thing to actually get it; and getting it involves some frustration, but even more importantly, determination. Almost anything is possible so long as you’re put the work in.

For the next couple of weeks, I’ll be working on getting the website looking and functioning the way I want. I think the goal is to get the general container looking as good as possible, then once that’s finished, I can focus on actually filling it up. Another goal is to start building the map. As I upload more and more photos onto my website, I’m going to start connecting them to different points and locations so that by the end, I’ll have at least one exhibit completed.

Wikipedia has always been one of those “off limit” online resources. For years, I have been discouraged in using it as a reputable source. In constructing the timeline of the refugee crisis, however, and understanding that any source is subjected to a bias from the individual who reports the information, I have found Wikipedia to be remarkably helpful and profound in its own unique right.

At the most fundamental level, history is a collection of information. An objective perspective of telling history would be to discover and relay the Truth of events transpired. While information itself certainly exists objectively, it is only through the subjective processes of human interaction and experience that Truth becomes information. At the point of translation from Truth to information, the objectivity of Truth is thus subjected to the unique experience or interaction of its observer. It is thus possible that a number of “true subjective truths” exist. History is the result of assigning information (i.e. subjective truths) meaning through a variety of media, thus compounding the nature of the subjectivity through which information is filtered.

Wikipedia is one of the most effective media in bridging together a vast network of information while simultaneously offering its own narrative with immediacy. In doing so, Wikipedia allows for quick access to information (whether “reputable” or not), and produces a story that accounts for many subjective truths. To me, this seems to be the most powerful tool that history has at its fingertips: a platform connecting a vast array of networks and experiences in real time.

In my research, Wikipedia’s citations have been extremely refreshing. The starting point in understanding a story perhaps starts with a literature search. Where does the non-journalist begin, however, as events transpire around the world? The Internet has allowed for the almost simultaneous transmission and communication of information. Thus, understanding historical events from a variety of perspectives is increasingly important. With a google search of “Syrian Refugee Crisis,” a browser ends up with these options. Selecting the Wikipedia story, one immediately has a variety of hyperlinked options, one of which directs the user to a timeline of the refugee crisis. From here, the course of events is plainly laid out. The short descriptions are layered with citations and hyperlinks connecting a variety of historical accounts.

Consider the day that is largely considered to have sparked protests that led to the Syrian Civil War: March 6, 2011. The Wikipedia page reads:

6 March, in the southern city of Daraa, fifteen^[6] teenagers were arrested for writing “the people want the regime to fall”^[7][6][8] on walls across the city. Supposedly the military police tortured them,^[7][8] or had carried them handcuffed out of their classroom.^[6]

Note that each statement is verified and linked to source(s) (6, 7, and/or 8), most of which derive from news agencies in the U.S. (e.g. NY Times or Washington Post) and around the world (e.g. Spiegel or BBC News). In considering Wikipedia’s narrative, one is forced to contemplate the validity of numerous other narratives. In the passage above, three different articles are used which have coinciding accounts of teenagers having been arrested by Syrian authorities and subsequently harmed on March 6, 2011. Ultimately, as I have emphasized in a previous discussion, in constructing my own narrative, I am less concerned with discrepancies in numbers and statistics, and am directing my efforts towards understanding what happened and what did not happen. What is striking to me about this historical account is that it was a group of teenagers standing up for a cause in which they fervently believed who incited an egregious civil war that has witnessed the greatest migration since the end of the second World War. This profound determination may never make its way into a history book.

Finally, while a major component of my experience in Germany will entail reflecting on the current sentiments of refugees and their transition to Germany, I am also interested in mapping the crisis. To do so, I intend to utilize a digital story mapping tool that I will employ on my website. This component of my project will likely be the final of this term before I leave for Germany.

Working on my project the past weeks has been eye-opening in many respects. I found that operating within WordPress’s framework, my ideas were reduced and confined to preexisting templates and themes. I have since spent time learning the basics of HTML, CSS, and have collaborated with a good friend and computer science student at W&L, Mitch Olson, to begin the structuring of the website from “scratch.” Thus far, the website has been written in the web application framework Ruby on the Rails, however, we are in the process of transferring this into Python, a programming language with which Mitch and I are both more familiar.

In the meantime, I have begun my investigation of the history of the refugee crisis, focusing my attention primarily on the roots of the Syrian Civil War. The art of telling history is profound, and using the internet as a medium through which to tell history is of particular interest to me. I began my research by reviewing articles written during the start of the uprisings in Syria in March of 2011. By cross-referencing articles from major newspapers, I have begun to uncover events which are of great significance in the history of this crisis.

In piecing together the historical puzzle of the Syrian Civil War and the refugee crisis, I have been prompted to contemplate the purpose of my endeavor in telling this history. What is the purpose of history? In my initial approach, I gravitated towards a history of “truths”, or facts, and of numbers and figures as a means through which one can best tell a convincing story. I have come to realize, however, that objective truth in history is a moot point, in part because I concur that the only truths that exist are subjective and unique to each individual’s experience. Thus, I will tell a history of personal experience, focusing on occurrences rather than numbers, and using the the internet to unify different virtual media through which a viewer can begin to understand the reality of the transpired and transpiring events.

Let me begin by announcing we have finally received the Hills family diaries that accompany the photograph albums! The father, Professor Hills, did not keep a journal, but his wife and daughter both kept diaries.

Moreover, since my last post, I’ve been working on sharpening my understanding of how I want my project to take shape. Particularly, I’ve been focused on a guiding argument and type of interface.

Colonialism still plays a huge role in my project, but I’ve also been considering ideas of regulation, objectification, voyeurism, and what Curtis Keim likes to refer to in his book Mistaking Africa: Curiosities and Inventions of the American Mind, the “Real Africa.” Specifically, I’m looking at the ways photography, film, and words, regulate our ideas of what we envision as the “Real Africa.” This Real Africa is a space rampant with tropes and stereotypes that make a spectacle of difference and deny Africans agency through practices of objectification. I want to show that even this collection of family vacation materials is not neutral. Rather, there is a particular function it serves in a broader social and historical context.

To articulate this point, there are several projects I want to incorporate into a larger exhibit. The webpage I am constructing uses Omeka as an interface, allowing me to separate my materials into a neutral collection with raw materials and a processed collection with an analysis of my findings. These are some of the main projects I aim to achieve:

1. Digitization of materials (scanned photos, transcribed diary pages, mp4 files)
2. An interactive map of the journey, tying the materials into a singular, cohesive, and visual narrative
3. Trope mapping (which may take several shapes)
   1. Trope frequency through a word cloud
   2. The relationships between tropes with the inclusion of examples (picture a spider web map)
   3. Historical tracing of tropes and connections to hierarchy (how a history of colonialism has constructed Africa as a continent of different and singular representation)
4. A virtual reconstruction of Africa as imagined by the Western eye

The fourth project I listed is very tentative and largely dependent on time constraints. However, I’m going to try to be as thorough as possible. I also want to make a point of demonstrating why exactly my project is important, so I will have a section discussing the consequences of misrepresentation.

I’m really excited about using Omeka, I think the layout will help streamline variation, pull everything together, and section it off in an accessible way. One of the Omeka based projects I’ve been admiring is Swarthmore College’s Black Liberation 1969 Archive. Finally, some of the software programs I’m looking at to help me create the individual projects are Neatline and Bocoup data visualization.