Timelines

My courses go beyond the presentation of content and historical claims to provide students with multiple opportunities to do the work.

Using timelines as a means to allow students to work closely with primary sources and start the process of creating historical narrative is something I've begun to develop over the last year. As I hone the developmental framework for my digital practice in the classroom, I want students to engage in critical thinking and information fluency in lower division classes using digital tools that have elements of visual and textual complexity.  The Knightlab Timeline JS tool has some of the same outcome I associate with ThirdSight History, but the tool's ease of use make it a great tool to start the process of digital engagement.  

Block by Block was critical making project designed to explore the history of property in Hannibal Square, the historic African American community in Winter Park, Florida. The origin of this project grew from a recurring community complaint that the character of the Hannibal Square community is lost in contemporary debates about gentrification. Engaging with institutional records, the timelines produced in this course served as digital companion projects to essays written by students in the course. Weaving together archival documents and genealogical records along with applicable secondary sources, students in this course explored Hannibal Square from the 1890s to 1980s through property. The timelines offered students a chance to reflect on social, political, and economic circumstances linked to black owned property in Hannibal Square.

Applied History: A Relational Timeline

This timeline project was conducted by my advisee Kyndall Fairbank during the spring 2017 semester. Our Applied History course serve as experiential vehicle for History major that allow them to apply skills acquired through the study of history. For this project, Kyndall worked in the archive to explore the historical relationship between Eatonville and Rollins College.  The historical specifics of the relationship are evident throughout the archive, but the timeline provides a way to historicize this relationship for public audience. This is not intended to be the last word in this process, this is the beginning of deeper exploration of archival narratives that I will build upon in critical making projects in other classes and in my own research. 

Applied History:  A Timeline of anti-black Violence

I directed this Applied History project conducted by Emmy Torres as a companion project to a bigger investigation of Oscar Mack being conducted by Samuel Proctor Oral History Center at the University of Florida.  I have worked with SPOHP to explore the case of Oscar Mack for several years. The original historical research was conducted as part of Critical Making project in HIS 141 African-American History Since 1877 in 2013. The result of that project was a radical transformation of my understanding of the anti-black violence effect on local black communities.