Samantha Citarella, George Washington University
Proposal Type
Collaborative Conversation
Seeking
- Seeking Additional Presenters
- Seeking Specific Expertise
- Seeking General Feedback and Interest
Related Topics
- Memory
- Oral History
- Place
Abstract
My research is concerned with the use of public history in urban environments. The work I present for this year’s sessions focuses on the use and development of a community-based cultural tourism effort that occurred in a gentrifying Washington, DC neighborhood in the late 2000s. Through my study of an unprocessed archival collection, I present a methodological intervention to question the criticism that such culture-led endeavors have predominantly received among the established literature.
Description
I am seeking assistance, feedback and additional perspectives/co-presenters for a research project that I would like to expand. In this work, I focused on Washington, D.C.’s Neighborhood Heritage Trail program, specifically using the development of the “Greater H Street” neighborhood trail as a case study. I relied on an unprocessed collection of the neighborhood’s Working Trail Group as my archive to locate voices from the community and gauge the merit of the use of “community-based” public history projects in an urban context.
Broadly, I am interested in studying neighborhood change, gentrification, and urban space. I specifically have an interest in the topic of “curating the city” and examining how cities are repositories of memory. These areas of interest have certainly revealed themselves as key factor throughout my research and I would love to hear from others who are grappling with similar questions or have an area of expertise on this area of public history.
I also am looking for ways to gather further oral histories of those who worked on this neighborhood project, to highlight the community’s perspective and elevate some of my lingering questions in order to place these findings in greater conversation with the effects of gentrification.
If anyone is interested in this topic and the use of public history among changing urban landscapes, I would love advise, tips and the opportunity to collaborate with others. It would be ideal to establish a comparative of these kinds of programs that use public history in various US cities. Further, it would be wonderful to have the chance to learn about best methodologies for doing this kind of multi-disciplinary research project.
If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to pass along someone’s contact information confidentially, please get in contact directly: Samantha Citarella, [email protected]
All feedback and offers of assistance should be submitted by July 1, 2018. If you have general ideas or feedback to share, please feel free to use the comments feature below.
Great proposal Samantha, here is some feedback anyways. I have been doing similar work in Montreal. One of the big challenges, and one that demands more attention from public historians, is the way that even these community urban curatorial projects support or resist ongoing gentrification processes. The intention might to resist but what is the consequence? It seems like this is where you are headed with your proposal – but you might make this more explicit. At some point, your proposal connects with my own one – so depending on how it goes we might want to ask if our session proposals might be paired back-to-back so that participants have a chance to sustain a conversation over a couple sessions. Anyways, just some thoughts!
Be good to make this multi-ethnic, multi-racial. There is a significant Chinese American project, now in its sixth year of operation. It has walking tour elements and film/oral history projects as well. Contact founder Ted Gong for more info. The project host is: The 1882 Foundation. Good luck, Franklin
I like this a lot, and sense that your questions fit into a conversation that’s been ongoing at NCPH for a few years now. Consider Patrick Grossi’s award-winning essay in TPH ca. 2015/16, and the project he managed (http://funeralforahome.org). Might be fun, as you think through this, to build in some retrospection. That is, how/why has this set of questions evolved over the last few years and what are we learning along the way?
In relation to Steven High’s comment, questions about trails and “tourism” – making stories that are held internally to a community visible to people from the outside – I think are really valuable to ask. What are tools to resist signs and markers as “commodification”? Can we figure out who actually visits trails and what motivated them? How does this intersect with Airbnb and a new generation of travelers’ preferences for “off-the-beaten-path” tourism, armed with apps that make locally-acquired knowledge easily accessible to any newcomer? I am thinking about Japonica Brown-Saracino’s profiles of gentrifiers, too, and “social preservation” as a process and practice.
I am also thinking about my own home which was for a few years home to a very important figure in black history – it is a private single family home with a historic marker for the African American Heritage Trail, and my family is white. I love talking with the people who stop and visit – and especially sharing with them the history of the home, which was originally owned by a black Canadian immigrant woman, a really great character. Being on a trail is part of my daily life, and luckily I’m a public historian! How does community stewardship of trails get sustained over time, as ownership changes hands?
I really love that you’re looking at an archive of the process of making this trail and asking meta-questions about the public history practice.
Hello,
If in your trails panel you need another participant, my project is looking at a trail of a Revolutionary War general that is marked across the land from PA into NY state. Some of the markers are in urban environments, and have been built over again and again. I have spent some time looking theoretically/philosophically at what it means to travel such a trail — I am a cultural anthropologist and could present a panel on the attempts to trace “General Sullivan’s Trail” across the land.
If you need an additional person, please let me know and I can send you an actual abstract.
I’m a professor at Lafayette College.