Digital, Experiential, and Embodied: Reckoning with the Past in Putnam County, Georgia

Digital Humanities in the U.S. has often focused on digital design over how humanities content might be used. Our Georgia Virtual History Project was built from the opposite direction. Rather than simply creating digitized humanities, we are dedicated to exploring the ways in which the digital world can help us construct more robust, place-based scholarship that impacts the lives of those who make and use it. We want our work to exist both online and out in the world, to speak equally to scholars and the general public, and to demonstrate that the humanities are not the purview of the academic elite but rather an essential tool for reaching out and giving voice to traditionally underserved populations.The paper situates the Georgia Virtual History Project within the universe of digital humanities scholarship, then explores a case study of how it works in the real world. By explaining both our project and how it has been used in an economically disadvantaged rural school system, we will present a model that is an attempt to remake public K-12 education—and digital humanities—as an embodied experience.