[On August 6, 1991, World Wide Web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee publicly announced his WWW software for the first time. So for the 30th anniversary of the occasion that brought us all here, this week I’ll highlight just a handful of the many wonderful AmericanStudies websites. Share your favs for a crowd-sourced post, please!]
In one
of my very early posts, I paid tribute to my Dad Steve Railton’s
work on groundbreaking American literary & cultural websites. But since
then he’s created a third, so for this week’s series I’ll say a bit more about
the first two and highlight that new one as well:
1)
Mark Twain in His Times: Railton’s
first site turns 25 this year, which, much like watching a child age, makes me
feel super old. But I’m very proud of my first-born half-sibling (okay,
abandoning that metaphor now), and have used it in countless classes to great
effect (most of all my Special
Author: Mark Twain course, natch). The separate sections on six of Twain’s
major books are phenomenal, as are those on thematic categories like identity
and marketing. But my favorite thing is how intuitive and easy the site is to
navigate and use—no small feat 25 years ago, and frankly no guarantee in sites
created in 2021 either. Don’t believe me? Take it for a trip down the e-river and
see for yourself!
2)
Uncle
Tom’s Cabin & American Culture:
A couple years after starting the Twain site (which continues to evolve—that’s
one thing about online projects, for good and for bad there’s no definitive
end; it’s very good for us but can be tough for their creators), Railton
launched this second, even more ambitious digital humanities project. Funded by
grants from the NEH and the NEA, award-winning,
and (I know from countless testimonies) a vital resource for educators and
scholars of every type, the UTC site
is a true model for online public scholarship. That’s true of the content,
which contextualizes this one hugely influential text in history, literature, culture,
popular culture, biography, scholarship, and more. But to my mind it’s even
more true in its trio of navigation
modes—Search, Browse, and Interpet—from which all those working on digital
projects can learn a great deal.
3)
Digital Yoknapatawpha: DY is
that aforementioned newest project, and is distinct from the other two in one
key way: while Railton still created and directs it, it has been developed and
built by a team
of collaborators from all over the world. It also uses mapping,
graphics, and other digital humanities technologies in ways that reflect
just how far both DH capabilities and Railton’s own ideas have continued to
progress (and of course what collaborators have added to the mix) since those
1990s sites. But at the same time, there’s a clear through-line here: the use
of web projects to contextualize and amplify our work with texts and authors,
to bring us back to our literary and cultural histories in new and nuanced and
even more meaningful ways.
Next AMST site
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Favorite websites, past or present, you’d share for the crowd-sourced
post?
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