Digital History Collaboration at University of Arkansas Awarded $500K

(Voices of Grambling Podcast)

A digital history collaboration between University of Arkansas in Fayetteville and Grambling State University in Grambling, Louisiana has been awarded a $500,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation.

The grant, awarded to GSU with a significant subgrant to the U of A, will support the next iteration of the collaborative project, “Voices of Grambling: Scaling Digital Equities,” which is an immersive virtual-reality experience that aims to enhance the understanding and interpretation of African American history through advanced digital technology.

The grant, led by Edward Holt with Yanise Days from GSU’s Department of History and Brian McGowan from the U of A’s Department of History, will also scale up an experiential learning lab at GSU that houses the current version of the project.

“This grant is the largest humanities grant the U of A has received since 1985, and it will be instrumental in advancing our work in the burgeoning digital humanities field,” McGowan said in a press release. “It is also poised to capture voices and oral histories that would otherwise be lost.”

The project aims to produce several key deliverables, including an interactive VR immersive environment of key past GSU events, two workshops focused on digital equity and Black freedom movements, a public lecture series around the themes of the project, two national conference presentations and 12 student internships to assist in the development of the work.

“It also aims to bring together faculty and students from both institutions to discuss and develop strategies for bridging the digital divide between large research institutions and smaller minority-serving institutions,” McGowan said in the release.

GSU’s Holt said in the release that the ultimate mission of the multi-phase project is to record and interpret the African American experience in Northern Louisiana and not lose knowledge of the past.

So far, the project has collected and preserved dozens of oral history interviews, published four seasons of the podcast “Voices of Grambling,” held several public lectures and has built a digital history and experiential learning lab. McGowan said in the release that the early endeavors were instrumental in establishing the groundwork for the Mellon Foundation grant.

“By bringing together HBCUs and land-grant institutions for conversations on digital equity, we are not only aiming to empower local communities but to create a collaborative blueprint in the digital humanities for more institutions to follow so that valuable histories aren’t lost as technology continues to move forward,” Caree Banton, chair of the U of A’s history department, said in the release.

The “Voices of Grambling” project has received previous funding from various organizations, including the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, the Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest and the National Endowment for the Humanities.