(Dis)Placed Urban Histories: Combining Digital Humanities Pedagogy and Community Engagement

Abstract

The course “(Dis)Placed Urban Histories” has been offered each spring since 2015 at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study and brings a historian’s perspective to investigating the impacts of gentrification and urban planning strategies in rapidly changing communities in New York City. During the 2016 and 2017 course iterations, Professor Rebecca Amato, collaborated with librarian, Zach Coble, to create online digital exhibits to showcase the students’ fieldwork and to create a resource for participating community partners. While the faculty-library partnership was successful in creating a digital humanities pedagogy that helped students build methodological and technical skills, the process also revealed shortcomings about working with communities with low access to computers or with aging populations with few technical skills.