Collaborative Projects in Digital Humanities: Lessons from 'Proud and Torn,' an Online Interactive Timeline

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Brief Description

This Roundtable discussion brings together key historians, media scholars, designers, web developers, and animators who have shaped the groundbreaking interactive timeline narrative, “Proud and Torn: How my family survived Hungarian history.” Four years in the making, this project is the most ambitious historical narrative adapted to the web, and it is setting new standards for what is possible through historical texts in terms of visualization and the reinterpretation of history. The roundtable will focus on advice for success in collaborative, interdisciplinary, digital projects, on the project’s specific interventions in Eastern European history, and on the relationship between family history and broader historical narratives.

Proud and Torn brings a highly visual approach to Digital Humanities—over 850 photographs, maps, graphics (many of them animated), and looping film clips—that together create a rich tapestry of visual storytelling controlled by parallax animation. The project challenges the dominant and narrow portrayals of Hungarian and European history by placing a greater emphasis on rural and agricultural history and using fresh visual sources from amateur and underutilized archival collections. By assembling members of our development team for this Roundtable discussion, we hope to shed light on all aspects of our creative process.

Sub Unit

• Digital Humanities

Chair

• Bettina Fabos, U of Northern Iowa

Roundtable Members

• Collin Cahill, U of Northern Iowa

• Judit Hegedus, Open Society Archives

• Kristina Poznan, College of William & Mary

• Leslie M Waters, Randolph-Macon College