Digital Storytelling

The New York Times blog the Opinionator has started a blog series called Disunion, which “revisits and reconsiders America’s most perilous period — using contemporary accounts, diaries, images and historical assessments to follow the Civil War as it unfolded.”

Here is an overview of what this series will be doing:

The story of the Civil War will be told in this series as a weekly roundup and analysis, by Jamie Malanowski, of events making news during the corresponding week 150 years ago. Written as if in real time, this dispatch will, after this week, appear every Monday. Additional essays and observations by other contributors, along with maps, images, diaries and so forth, will be published several times a week.

Each week a new series of accounts and analysis will be published, and I have to say this weeks have been rather compelling, I guess the fact that I live in Civilwarland informs my opinion, but nonetheless, it is amazing to track and learn history this way. This model would make a great digital storytelling project for some historians at UMW.

More than that, by matching the exact day 150 years ago, the stories are very timely. How about yesterday’s post in preparation of election day in New York City, 1860.

New York, Nov. 2, 1860

Young Republicans with axes! New York firemen run amok!
Welcome to election week, 1860.

Hurled brickbats, smashed glass and howled curses were the soundtrack of American electoral politics a century and a half ago. The oratorical eloquence that most people today associate with the 19th century — those resonant fanfares of prose carved upon monuments, enshrined in history textbooks, hammered into the brains of 10th graders — often provided little more than the faintest melodic line, drowned out amid the percussive din. Last week’s notorious “head-stomping” incident outside a Senate debate in Kentucky, footage of which has drawn nationwide condemnation and half a million views on YouTube, seems almost gentle in comparison.