Tag Archive

community history

Recognition of the Jewish past in Western Ukraine: Changing for the better

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I recently returned from a visit to the former Jewish shtetls of my ancestors now located in present-day Ukraine. This was my second trip in less than a decade, but it felt very different from my initial experience in 2010. When I first visited, I was overwhelmed by the emotional impact of seeing firsthand once flourishing communities relegated to historical oblivion. Read More

Project Showcase: Forty Blocks: The East Garfield Park Oral History Project

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The Chicago History Museum (CHM) and Breakthrough, a community-based organization that provides social services on Chicago’s West Side, have launched Forty Blocks: The East Garfield Park Oral History Project. Focused on the 1970s to the present, this collaborative effort examines daily life in East Garfield Park, an African American neighborhood that has been marginalized in contemporary Chicago and neglected in the recent historical record. Read More

Digital community engagement across the divides

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In 2008, the Journal of American History published a conversation among several historians regarding the future of digital history. William G. Thomas III  said, “We might imagine a more proximate collaboration in which historians team up with [community] groups. The Web 2.0 movement might allow historians and the public to make history together rather than separately. Read More