The Official Blog of the Urban History Association
“The history of Lviv Interactive itself is a fairly relevant case study for exploring the relatively early days of digital history projects in Ukraine and Eastern Europe,” notes Taras Nazaruk, head of Digital History projects at the Center for Urban History in Lviv, Ukraine. Entering its adolescence, Lviv Interactive turned fifteen this year. The project […]
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Though still undergoing construction, Bunker Hill Refrain, a digital humanities endeavor from the University of Southern California, provides a window into an innovative project that has at once taken shape but is also still taking full form. A synecdoche for the city’s larger history, “Bunker Hill is emblematic of the choices we made,” notes Meredith […]
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What is a “contested city” and how does one engage its historical layers? Few cities can be described as contested as Rijeka, a metropolis that has been under the Hapsburgs, Italy, Yugoslavia, and finally Croatia. Brigitte Le Normand, an associate professor at Maastricht University in the Netherlands and project director for Rijeka in Flux, has […]
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The residents of Boston have witnessed no small amount of debate and conflict in the city’s education and labor history. Schools have served as a flashpoint in this history, and a project that has taken form over the past five years, the creation of the Boston Teacher’s Union Collection (BTU Collection) strives to document and […]
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Begun in the fall of 2016 by California State University Fresno historians Sean Slusser and Romeo Guzman (now at the Claremont University), “Straight Outta Fresno” (SOF) provides a view into the burgeoning “popping” scene that emerged among multi-ethnic and multi-racial hip hop fans of 1980s and 1990s Fresno. As co-founder Slusser discusses below, though a […]
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Formally launched in 2014, the CUNY Digital History Archive (CDHA) is as much a “digital history project” as it is archive, notes Roxanne Shirazi, CDHA project director and assistant professor at CUNY Graduate Center. From the outset, CHDA adopted an “activist approach to documenting CUNY history form the ground up,” digitizing the papers of students, […]
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Established over a decade ago, the Lowcountry Digital Library has amassed an array of historical materials documenting the culture of the region, the lives of its inhabitants, and its connections to the Atlantic World. Charleston’s political, cultural, and economic prominence in the area means it occupies an important place in the library’s archive and exhibitions. […]
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Religion has often been a central force in urban America, particularly in the twentieth century. For example, by 1940 Los Angeles exhibited a “multiplicity and diversity of faiths…that probably cannot be duplicated in any other city on earth,” noted the authors of the WPA guide to Los Angeles. L.A.’s religious diversity included Buddhism, Catholicism, Judaism, […]
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The pervasive effects of the coronavirus have forced numerous public history institutions to rethink their mission and the means by which an organization might still work toward long held goals in a radically different environment. Celebrating its 60thanniversary this year, Baltimore Heritage serves as just one example of this phenomena, as the historic preservation non-profit nimbly […]
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In Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe, the narrator speaks ominously of a coming sickness: “In the whole face of things, as I say, was much altered: sorrow and sadness sat upon every face; and though some parts were not yet overwhelmed, yet all looked deeply concerned; and as we saw it apparently […]
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The Metropole 