About

About City of Elms: The Digital New Haven Project



As the Yale University political scientist Douglas Rae has observed in his now classic examination of New Haven urbanism The City, New Haven, Connecticut is a city that is in some ways representative of many mid-sized American cities across the nation whose histories traced the arc of industrial growth and de-industrialization. In many other ways, including the presence of an elite Ivy League institution along its once-elm-lined streets, New Haven is somewhat exceptional. New Haven was historically a leader in many areas--the place where macadam and fire resistant clothing was pioneered, where Winchester rifles were produced, where the industrial system of production known as the American System of Manufactures was set, the place where new ideas about urbanism known as "The City Beautiful Movement" were articulated, and a so-called "model city" where whole city blocks were destroyed and neighborhoods bisected to hasten urban redevelopment as residents were leaving the city for the suburbs. New Haven was among the first American cities to be lit by electricity and to be served with a modern underground sewer system. For these reasons and many more, we think New Haven is an ideal subject for a digital humanities project that will hone our students' facility with increasingly in-demand technical skills in web design and digitization alongside enduring skills that the history degree has long taught such as analytical and critical thinking, written and oral communication, and the ability to contextualize the past to understand the ways our complicated world innovates, changes, or sometimes remains stubbornly the same over time.

The objectives of The Digital New Haven Project and its attendant course HIS259: The Digital New Haven Project are five-fold:

1. To teach students about the history of New Haven by incorporating broad perspectives and historical methods that approach the past from political, economic, cultural, and environmental perspectives and that, in turn, cultivate analytical and critical thinking, research, written and oral communication, and a broader humanistic way of looking at the world that appreciates difference, contextualizes identity, promotes creativity, and enhances quality of life.

2. To teach students the technical skills in web design and digitization that companies, archival and research institutions, educators, municipal, state, and federal offices and agencies, and others now increasingly seek in prospective employees.

3. To establish partnerships with local organizations, institutions, and municipal offices to assist in the telling of New Haven's unique story in order to form bonds among the university, our faculty and staff, students, and the larger New Haven community with the intention of encouraging internships that may turn into long, rich careers for our students.

4. To tell that story in new, creative, and accessible ways that reach broader communities within the city and outside of it, to construct history in ways that are relevant to people outside the university, and to forge ties across communities of class, race, gender, and ethnicity that share a common interest in New Haven and a common history in its past.

5. To advance the social justice mission of Southern Connecticut State University by recognizing diversity, tolerance, service, and our common humanity, grounding New Haven's past in a broad scope of documentary evidence, highlighting competing narratives of that past, and providing a forum for knowledge and discussion about the historical roots of the challenges and opportunities facing the city and its residents today.

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