Reflecting on Week One of Mapping Freedom 2023

To start, these weekly reflection posts will provide a short account about some of the topics I learned during the week, some of my accomplishments I made relating to my work, and some of the struggles that I worked through while navigating the first few days. While our first session was on Monday, much of the time was spent doing introductions and icebreaker activities with my fellow students and the faculty and staff that are guiding us. Our first lesson came on Tuesday where we met with Dr. Elizabeth La Beaud to discuss background information relative to the Digital Humanities, which is the main academic discipline that we are working in during this experience. During our lecture we outlined how digital humanities not only covers the process of how we answer humanities based questions, but how digital tools are also used in the process. Some of these tools include Geographic Information Systems, CS programs, as well as video, audio, and digital media production/editing equipment. Interestingly enough, I had never known that digital humanities included the systems that preserved and protected documents, and in connection to this project, it makes complete sense. When preserving historical documents/items physically and digitally, it takes great attention to detail as well as the skills necessary to operate an online archival database to ensure that the information is kept as safe as the object itself. As I reflected on our first lesson, I felt a renewed sense of confidence in myself as this is my first time being part of such an extensive and dedicated project. I knew that I had at least a preliminary knowledge base to pull from this felt like an accomplishment to me. Another accomplishment from our first day was winning an introductory scavenger hunt around USM. I was paired up with another one of my fellow group members from this experience and we raced around in the hot sun (it was my first time living in the South) looking for landmarks on campus and answering questions on a worksheet. We ended up winning and received a Raising Canes gift card as our prize, which was very exciting as I have never been to one before.

Over the next two days we learned more about the historical context of the Civil War and the Reconstruction period that followed. This was a great learning experience as I have not been refreshed on Civil War history in a few years. I also enjoyed getting to learn more about The Civil War Reconstruction Governors of Mississippi project from Dr. Susanna Ural, historian of the Civil War, and how we can search the website's database to discover new trends and topics relating to letters sent to Mississippi's Governor during that era. As the week continued, I began thinking of research topics including the recruitment of African American men into the USCT (U.S. Colored Troops) as well as how residents of Mississippi viewed the USCT and Union Soldiers while they occupied their cities and towns.

This week has definitely been a bit of a whirlwind so far and I would also like to reflect on a few of the areas I felt I prevented me from doing my best work. To start, I have felt a bit back and forth on the direction of the overall project. I understand that we are using the resources provided by CWRGM for data visualization (likely GIS), but I am just confused on where how the research paper portion connects. In my mind, I am imagining a 8+ page paper that describes a topic/trend from CWRGM accompanied with a GIS map that will visually portray data that we collect, analyze, and display. Once the experience starts coming to a close, we will present our findings to the public orally, with our writing and GIS as evidence for our research. I know that we are in week one and we still have some background to get through, but this is just the main question that has been on my mind. Other than that, I have not had too many issues outside of the ironic fact that since we are still learning, we do not have a large rabbit hole to dive into yet as far as research goes. Lastly, I the food from The Fresh has been OK. I am not one to complain about the little things and I understand that summer time at a university dining hall does not equal the same menu as during the school year. Overall, I have enjoyed this first week and am excited to see where we go from here!