Related projects:

In the Fall of 2022, I had the opportunity to work with the Center for Public Humanities and the Dauphin County Library System (DCLS) to produce a virtual tour starring the Pennsylvania Past Players. The Past Players are a group of living history actors based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and they look to share the stories of African Americans who lived and impacted the region during the Reconstruction era. To see the full playlist of tour videos, please click here. This project is still continuing to grow as I am in the process of finalizing a documentary that I created during the spring of 2023 that covers the development of the Pennsylvania Past Players and their overall goal and mission.

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Additionally, in the Fall of 2022, I began working on an ongoing project surrounding the Second Capitol Expansion of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. During the early 1900s, the City Beautiful movement spread into Harrisburg, Pennsylvania's capital city. With the hopes of creating a cleaner and more appealing city, politicians and local leaders pushed for better standards, ultimately leading to the destruction of multiple communities, the best known being the Old Eighth Ward. The Old Eighth was primarily occupied by African American and immigrant communities during this time, and over the course of 40-50 years, Harrisburg worked to replace the neighborhood with public parks, green spaces, and state office buildings. Using government documents located at the Pennsylvania State Archives, I am in the process of summarizing the motivations behind the Second Capitol Expansion, which took place after much of the Old Eighth was destroyed. This topic has not been highly circulated, and I am continuing to share this story through this Story Map: Unfit for Living, Fit for Beautification.

 

For more information about the destruction of the Old Eighth, please see Michael Barton and Jessica Dorman's book Harrisburg's Old Eighth Ward, as well as this website run by Messiah University and Harrisburg University of Science and Technology, called Digital Harrisburg.

 

Lastly, I would like to highlight two projects connected to the Digital Humanities as well as public history that focus on local history near my home in central New Jersey. I live about 15 minutes from Princeton University, which is a world-renowned institution that possesses a profound history both in its accolades and its physical properties. In the Spring of 2021, I worked with one of my classmates to create a virtual tour that covers specific gargoyles on Princeton's campus. This idea came from a small pamphlet published by the Princeton University Art Museum that I have at home and often read through as a kid. We decided to take their tour and make it virtual in this video. 

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My second local history project came about as part of a course I took during the Spring of 2023 called Museums, Monuments, and Memorials, where we worked to design a virtual exhibit about a particular object or collection. I decided to create another story map that discussed the history of the velocipede at the Metlar-Bodine House Museum in Piscataway, New Jersey. A velocipede is a predecessor to our modern-day bicycle, and according to the Metlar-Bodine House, the vehicle in their collection has been certified as the oldest in all of New Jersey. I worked as an archival intern at MBHM in the summer of 2022, and to give back to the museum, I created this virtual exhibit: Changing Gears - The Story of the Metlar-Bodine House Velocipede.