Technology is dramatically transforming historical scholarship and writing in the 21st century. Paper-based, two dimensional manuscripts and texts—the staples of traditional history and archival research—now coexist with dynamic, multiform, digitally coded sources. Material previously available to only a few, in relatively obscure or inaccessible archives, is now widely available to a large and ever-expanding public. Flowing across millions of miles of wire or over satellite links, electronic representations of the visual and aural richness of diverse human cultures have smashed the physically restraining barriers of stone museums and archival vaults, enriching the intellectual and aesthetic lives of scholars and grade school pupils alike. The implications of all these changes for research, pedagogy, and publishing are enormous; they have not been lost on us.

The Department of History at the University at Albany is one of the pioneers in wedding historical scholarship and teaching with digital technologies. For close to a decade, our initiatives have been grounded in a belief that the work of historians should not be restricted to the narrow margins of academic discourse. We wanted to make historical thinking and historical reasoning a larger part of American life by bringing history to the airwaves, to television, and to the Internet. Revealing and communicating the nuances of our field in the 21st century requires more than proficiency in navigating archives, or expertise in the manipulation of text and language; it encompasses, as well, adeptness in media use and interpretation.

The Clio Media Initiatives of the Department include a variety of projects that integrate substantive scholarship with various media forms. They are meant to stimulate, entertain, enlighten—and to catalyze research in areas of scholarship hitherto underrepresented in our profession: scholarship sensitive to the ear and eye, to the aural and visual dimensions of our past. Our endeavors bring together an intellectually rigorous group of historians interested in various media techniques with specialized media experts—both working to develop a comprehensive multimedia program closely linked to the History Department's thematic and geographic academic concentrations.

We are creating the Clio Media Institute for History which will bring together specialists from a wide variety of disciplines to engage in individual and collaborative projects focusing on the use of aural and visual media in the study of history and the dissemination of historical knowledge. The Institute's work will be organized around six program areas which encompass our current projects and look forward to new initiatives.

To learn more about specific projects and examine portions of projects currently underway, follow the links on the left, or scroll below.

Currently in development, Capital Voices ~ Capital Lives examines the rich diversity of individuals and communities that make up the Greater Capital region of Upstate New York. We will present local history—autobiographies, diaries, oral histories, and exhibits—on the WWW, on local radio and television, and in audio and video documentary productions.

Life and Labor in a Corporate Community: An On-Line History of the Endicott Johnson Corporation is a WWW exhibit that examines the history of one of America's largest shoe and leather manufacturing firms. In addition—and more significantly -- it explores in detail the paternalistic practices of the Endicott Johnson Corporation from the late 19th century through the 1960s. The firm was a pioneer in a business reform movement that has come to be known as "Welfare Capitalism." The exhibit is based on the work of Prof. Gerald Zahavi and documentary filmmaker Brian D. Mauriello—who graciously contributed some of the graphic images and video clips that make up the WWW exhibit. The exhibit will be installed in stages.

The Glovers of Fulton County is a long term research and documentation project that examines the glove industry of Fulton County, New York. Fulton County was long a center of world glove production during the late 1800s and early decades of this century. Documents noted below are a sample of what will ultimately be a comprehensive hypertext exploration of this important Mohawk Valley industry, examining its evolution from the late 1700s through the late 20th century. The final installation will contain over a thousand images and thousands of pages of text documents (letters, reports, wage and census data, newspaper accounts, miscellaneous archival sources, government documents, business records, and oral histories—interview transcripts, along with audio and video excerpts). The Glovers of Fulton County project is directed by Prof. Gerald Zahavi and Susan McCormick.

We sponsor an ongoing lecture series open to the public as well as faculty and students in the University community.  Recent events include:

• Stephen Brier, of the American Social History Project, CUNY—Making History Accessible:  The Experience of CUNY's American Social History Project.
• Laurie Kahn-Leavitt, filmmaker, screenwriter and producer of A Midwife's Tale—History and Documentary Filmmaking.
• Joshua Brown, of the American Social History Project, CUNY—Documentary filmmaking.
• Charles Hardy III, oral historian—Oral history and radio documentary production.
• Marty Pottenger. Carpenter, playwright, oral historian, performance artist, and director. Autrhor and solo performer on Obie-award winning City Water Tunnel #3—"A Workshop with Marty Pottenger: Oral History and Theater ~ Making City Water Tunnel #3"
• Dan Collison. Independent radio and video documentary producer based in Silver Spring, Maryland and a regular contributor to National Public Radio's news magazine programs and Public Radio International's This American Life. He has worked in public radio since 1981, including four years as senior producer and editor of National Public Radio's All Thing Considered (Weekend edition)—"History and the Art of Documentary Production : A Workshop with Dan Collison."

The Schenectady General Electric in the Twentieth Century Project began under the auspices of the Oral History Program of the Department of History in 1991 and has been under the directorship of Prof. Gerald Zahavi since its inception. It started as an oral history and document collection project, but has recently expanded into multimedia and hypertext production. The goal of the project—originally and on-going—is to make accessible to scholars and the general public as full an account as possible of the history of one of the nation's premier electrical industry pioneers—Schenectady General Electric.

Click on the links below to sample some of the unique documentation we will bring you in the future:

Thomas Edison's Visit to the Schenectady Works, 1922. A GE silent film. [Digitized for high-speed connections. Source: Hall of Electrical History, Schenectady Museum.]

Helen Quirini and General Electric:
A Personal Memoir of the World War II Years (an excerpt):
Helen Quirini went to work for Schenectady General Electric in 1941 and continued to work at the Schenectady works until her retirement in 1980. She became active in Local 301 of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) during WWII. In recent years, Ms. Quirini has been extensively interviewed by the Schenectady GE in the Twentieth Century Project. Two years ago, in part because of growing interest in the role of women in industry, she decided that she would begin writing her memoirs—an industrial diary. This is an excerpt from that work, completed in 1997. More of Ms. Quirini's writings, as well as extensive selections from the Helen Quirini Papers (now a part of the Schenectady GE in the 20th Century archives) will be available at this WWW site in the future.

Ruth Young Jandreau (autobiographical writings):
Ruth Young was a prominent trade union activist in the late 1930s and during the 1940s. She became the first woman on the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America Executive Board in 1944 and fought hard in the 1940s for wage equity and women's seniority rights. Throughout that decade she was also quite active within the US Communist party. In 1950, she married Schenectady Local 301's business agent, Leo Jandreau. She and her new husband soon severed their ties to both the CP and the UE. Her personal papers are currently being collected by the Schenectady GE in the Twentieth Century Project and will be available on line in the future. This is a selection from her papers.

Talking History, based at the University at Albany, is a production, distribution, and instructional facility for all forms of "aural" history. Our mission is to provide as broad and outstanding a collection of audio documentaries, speeches, debates, oral histories, conference sessions, commentaries, archival audio sources, and other aural history resources as is available anywhere. We hope to expand our understanding of history by exploring the audio dimensions of our past, and we hope to enlarge the tools and venues of historical research and publication by promoting production of radio documentaries and other forms of aural history. In addition to our weekly radio program, we are engaged in numerous educational efforts. Some of the most talented radio producers and engineers currently working in public and non-commercial radio now contribute to Talking History—both to our programming and to our educational efforts through production workshops.
Talking History is also a weekly radio program—broadcast locally and on the Internet—focusing on history: how we recall it, preserve it, interpret it, transform it into myth, and how we pass it on—as teachers, researchers, archivists, documentary filmmakers, and  museum curators, among others. Internet radio and audio provides historians with the tools to deliver audio programs to audiences around the world. Archiving and transmitting historical and contemporary audio materials on the World Wide Web creates a rich resources for teachers in secondary schools and universities as well as furthering the migration of historical knowledge beyond the confinesof the classroom. Talking History airs both original productions and material produced elsewhere. To learn more, visit the Talking History WWW home page.

We support the meaningful and creative integration of multimedia resources and the innovative and effective incorporation of technology into history courses. Whether maintaining the resource rich History Department home page, identifying multimedia resources for faculty and students, suggesting ways to transform traditonal research assignments into documentary or hypertext projects, creating new courses, or undertaking collaborative research and documentation projects, the HMMC encourages faculty and students to explore and make use of new media in teaching, research, and publication.  Our goal is to enlarge options, spark excitement, and create scholarship that can be shared beyond the classroom, serving as a resource for others. Some examples:

• A History Web Site: American Lawyers and Federal Liquor Prohibition.

Professor Richard Hamm and doctoral student Laurie Kozakiewicz spent a semester working with undergraduate students to develop a legal history web site that incorporates traditional and new media historical research methods, individual scholarship, and collaborative learning. The final project not only fulfills course requirements, but will ultimately reside on the Web for use in an existing undergraduate course “Lawyers in American Life,” and be a generally available resource on the World Wide Web.
• Workers and Work in America, 1600-Present: A MultiMedia Course.
A reading, lecture, Internet (WWW), film, and discussion course examining the evolution of work within the North American/U.S.economy from the late 1500s, through industrialization, and into the "post-industrial" recent past. The course looks at both the structural economic changes that transformed work and American society in the last 400 years, as well as the cultural and political (broadly conceived) factors that textured and shaped that transformation. The course ranges over wide geographical realms, different workers, and industries. Teaching students how to access and critically evaluate the World Wide Web (WWW), film, video and audio resources as research tools is an important course component.  The site is maintained and updated regularly.  To learn more about the course and related resources, see Workers and Work.
• History Documentary Production for Radio

As the Associated Press noted last year radio is thriving ... "In the decade of the Internet, direct-to-home satellite television and new cable channels by the fistful, a technology that predates them all has emerged as a powerful force.... radio."  Millions of Americans spend hours commuting to work—and listening to radio. For the most part, they hear little about history there. This is unfortunate, and it reflects the realities of both present-day radio and academe. For much too long, historians have neglected radio (and other media) as a respectable instrument of communication. It was too public, too loud, too inhibiting, and too reductive of complex ideas and concepts about politics, the economy, gender, race, and culture. Historians paid a price for their neglect: they rendered themselves culturally invisible. They never cultivated an audience that extended far beyond their peers. This course is designed to train graduate and advanced undergraduate history students in the use of radio and radio technologies, to communicate historical ideas to broad audiences—and to do it in a way that does not dilute or oversimplify the work of serious historians. This necessarily involves detailed exploration of research (in both textual and audio sources), discussion of script writing and editing, and technical instruction in the art of production. The course is structured to take students from critique to production and distribution. Students will be expected to write a script and produce a half-hour historical documentary, one that would be worthy of being aired on radio and made available on one of our WWW sites.
• Practicum in Oral and Video History

This course is intended to be both a theoretical and practical introduction to oral and video history. It covers a wide territory: from the collection of oral/video testimony to the production of theatrical plays, as well as radio, film, and television documentaries  We'll explore several theoretical perspectives behind approaches to interviewing, recording, and editing the diverse and historically-conditioned experiences of elites and non-elites (political leaders, scientists, farmers, immigrants, blue-collar workers, teachers, domestic servants, and so on). We'll probe the problems that necessarily arise when oral historians evoke and interpret the memories of those who lie outside their own experiential, ideological, class, sexual, cultural, or racial horizons. From in-class discussions of memory and historical distortion, to interview theory; from practice interview sessions in class, to field projects; from technical instruction on the use of audio and video equipment, to the fine points of analog and digital audio editing; the course is designed to teach students critical and practical skills, and to demonstrate the potential of this important research and presentation methodology.

The U.S. Labor and Industrial History Audio Project is a comprehensive collection of audio files pertaining to U.S. labor and industrial history—drawn from various archives. The audio collection includes interviews, speeches, debates, oral history interviews, and other related materials.  The Audio archive will be enlarged and updated on a regular basis with both historical and current audio that will serve as a resource to enlarge understanding of U.S. labor and industrial history. Recent additions include selections from plenary sessions and workshops from  "The Fight for America's Future: A Teach-In with the Labor Movement," in New York City at Columbia University on October 3-4, 1996. at Columbia University, NYC. To go to the audio archive, click on the picture on your right.

   

Writing History/Writing Fiction was created as we considered how, as historians, we can rethink how we communicate our ideas.  Wanting to go beyond traditional academic publications and conference presentations, we undertook this experiment in form—the virtual conference—to explore one way historians might use new technologies.  We asked scholars to participate in an electronic conference session on a topic of shared interest:  writing history and writing fiction.  All of the participants write both. We asked each  participant to write a short essay on writing fiction and history.  The initial essays and all reactions were shared via email.  We preserved this "discussion."  The papers, and the exchange they spawned, are the core of this site. If left alone on the web, they would be just be another example of "text on the web."  Because the web facilitates the easy storage and retrieval of material, we included information to enrich and enliven the discussion. Because this is an experiment in form, we invite "browsers" to participate in this conference by adding their comments and suggestions. To see the results of this experiment in form, to meet the conference participants, and to participate in Writing History/Writing Fiction follow this link to the Virtual Conference.