Humanities Truck Community Archive

Collection Title: Humanities Truck Community Archive

Description: The Humanities Truck is a fully customized delivery truck that serves as an experimental mobile platform for collecting, exhibiting, preserving, and expanding dialogue around the humanities. Using the truck, we seek to mobilize the humanities and democratize the sharing and production of knowledge by bringing together scholars at American University with community residents across Washington, D.C. Together we can collect, create, interpret, and curate stories that can return to the communities they originated from and circulate throughout the metropolitan region. The truck’s custom-design creates a unique space for facilitating participatory, cultural, and educational experiences in the humanities. It has the capacity to function as a recording studio, workshop and maker space, and exhibit and performance venue. People can engage with the truck’s interior and exterior spaces. The exterior features powerful speakers, an all-weather flat screen television, and brackets for attaching a 120” roll-down movie screen for film showings. The magnetized exterior wall of the truck can serve as an exhibition space or also be used to facilitate workshops. The interior of the truck is sound-insulated, equipped with air-conditioning, a second flat screen tv, and ceiling speakers. It is modular and flexible as tables and shelving can be easily added and moved. The space can function as a recording studio for doing oral histories, a digitization station, a workshop space, or a pop-up exhibit gallery. The Humanities Truck is made possible through funding from the Henry Luce Foundation along with additional support from American University. How do we mobilize the humanities? The Humanities Truck working group seeks to establish an experimental mobile platform for collecting and preserving materials, and inspiring dialog around the humanities. The truck will provide resources and equipment for projects that document experiences, start conversations, and share the stories of diverse and underserved communities in the Washington, DC Metropolitan region. It will function as a mobile workshop, recording studio, and exhibit space that can be driven across the region to work with specific micro-communities across the city in the spaces they already gather.

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: 2019 "Celebrate Petworth" Festival; “Celebrate Petworth” is an annual free neighborhood festival organized by and for the residents of Petworth and surrounding neighborhoods, celebrating the creativity, diversity, culture, people and quality of life of the neighborhood through storytelling, live entertainment, fare from local restaurants, clinics, contests, crafts, and more. This collection features interviews and images from the 2019 "Celebrate Petworth" Festival.

: 2021 "Celebrate Petworth" Festival; “Celebrate Petworth” is an annual free neighborhood festival organized by and for the residents of Petworth and surrounding neighborhoods, celebrating the creativity, diversity, culture, people and quality of life of the neighborhood through storytelling, live entertainment, fare from local restaurants, clinics, contests, crafts, and more. This collection features interviews and images from the 2021 "Celebrate Petworth" Festival on September 25, 2021, in addition to interviews with Petworth residents collected prior to the event.

: 2022 "Celebrate Petworth" Festival

: 2023 Chinatown Community Festival; Chinatown Community Festival on Saturday June 3rd, 2023.

: Adams Morgan Day 2018; To celebrate the festival anniversary, DC Public Library has also collaborated with Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum and American University to highlight the history of the neighborhood through exhibitions, activities and performances. “We will strive to honor the decades of creativity, activism and diversity of Adams Morgan that continue to shape the community today,” said Washingtoniana librarian Michele Casto of DCPL. The Humanities Truck presented an exhibit about Adams Morgan using content from Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum’s “A Right to the City” exhibition and historic photos of Adams Morgan from the Nancy Shia Collection at DCPL. This collection contains photos taken from the event.

: Adams Morgan Day 2019; Adams Morgan Day is DC's longest running neighborhood festival, organized to celebrate Adams Morgan's eclectic history, culture, local artists, businesses, and residents, Together with the DC Public Library and Humanities Truck fellow Benjamin Stokes, the Humanities Truck featured the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum’s “A Right to the City” exhibit, hosted local music in the DCPL Performance Tent, and shared oral histories from the DC Storytelling System. This collection features photos taken at the event.

: Adams Morgan Day 2020; How could a truck spur digital experiences, especially during a pandemic? Humanities Truck project fellow Benjamin Stokes explored this concept during Adams Morgan Day on September 18, 2020. Adams Morgan Day is the longest-running neighborhood festival in DC. Stokes noted that things would be different, both for the pandemic and the immediacy of the protests around the murder of George Floyd. Stokes and project partners chose a hybrid approach that combined physical media (prints, signs, fliers, and video) with three kinds of digital interactivity: (1) mural hunt game; (2) trivia map activity; and (3) audio tour. The “Mural, Mural, on the Wall” game was a scavenger hunt-style game that guides players physically around the neighborhood, showcasing the murals and protest art along their path. Participating in the game automatically enrolled players in a raffle where the winner won a shirt designed by a local artist. (The prior year we had tested the raffle as a driver of activity, but this year it would be secondary.) Collection contains photos from the event.

: Adams Morgan Day 2021; The Humanities Truck participated in the 2021 “Adams Morgan Day” Festival, which focuses on the neighborhood of Adams Morgan and its culture, diversity, and history. The Truck displayed a photo exhibit from local photographer Nancy Shia, titled “Adams Morgan, Once and Now: Human Need or Developers Greed?” utilizing 45 years of photo documentation that explores themes of gentrification, human need, and community change over time in the neighborhood of Adams Morgan in Washington, DC. Oral history interviews were conducted to gauge festival-goers' relationship to Adams Morgan, meaningful spaces in the neighborhood, and how those spaces may have changed over time. This collection features photos and oral history interviews from the event. https://humanitiestruck.com/allexhibits/adams-morgan-once-and-now/

: Adams Morgan Day 2022

: Adams Morgan Day 2023

: American University: An Activist Tradition; At American University, students are among the most politically engaged in the nation. This engagement can be traced to its beginnings, when women worked towards social reform and shaped the identity of the university with their own beliefs and ideals. On April 30, 2019, American University Public History Master's students Sean O'Malley, Kaylee Redard, and Katherine McCauley took the Humanities Truck to the American University quad to present American University: An Activist Tradition, an exhibit that traces the political engagement of women at the university and highlight the holdings in the University Archives. The students worked with community partner and American University archivist Leslie Nellis to research and design the exhibit for their Spring 2019 Practicum class under the guidance of Professor Malgorzata Rymsza-Pawlowska. This collection contains photos from the event.

: Annual Reports

: Art All Night; The Humanities Truck made appearance at Art All Night 2019 in Tenleytown at Citizen Heights Church. In partnership with the DC Punk Archive in DC Public Library’s Special Collections and community curators, Marc Minsker and Ray Barker, the Humanities Truck displayed an exhibit using flyers and newspaper articles to explore the history of punk music in DC, specifically at Fort Reno Concerts. This collection includes photos from the event.

: Art All Night Mount Pleasant 2023; The Humanities Truck participated in Art All Night 2023 at Mount Pleasant on Friday September 29th. This collection includes photographs of prompt cards from the Humanities Truck interactives, as well as photographs taken by Humanities Truck Director Dan Kerr and Community Associate Angie Whitehurst.

: "Artists are the Gatekeepers of Truth", Paul Robeson Celebration; On April 9. 2022, at the corner of Georgia Ave and Kansas Ave, the Humanities Truck parked and partnered with with several community partners to host "Artists are the Gatekeepers of Truth: Paul Robeson's 124th Birthday Celebration" with special guest Uzikee Nelson to celebrate black art, community, and culture

: AUnion: Let's Strike!; Photos and a video taken at the AUnion: Let's Strike! event held at American University by the students in Anna Kaplan's Introduction to Public History undergraduate course.

: A Blue Note on Repair: The Truth About Reparations; A Blue Note on Repair: The Truth About Reparations is a one woman show by Dr. Karen Wilson-Ama'Echefu, PhD (Dr. K, Singer, Storyteller, and Scholar) which explores five core elements of reparation as defined by the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights through song, story and dance with Dancer Choreographer, Yolanda "Yogui" Ackles and Musician, Brian Farrow (Fiddle). Event was held July 30, 2022 at the Katzen Arts Center. Collection contains photos from the event.

: Celebrate Petworth 2023; Celebrate Petworth, a community festival in the neighborhood of Petworth, November 18, 2023

: Cleveland Homeless Oral History Project; Between 1996 and 2002, Daniel Kerr founded and directed the Cleveland Homeless Oral History Project. Throughout this period, nearly 200 unhoused men and women participated in workshops, audio and video interviews, and research questionnaires. As part of the project Kerr initiated Frost Radio, a weekly show on WRUW FM Cleveland. Kerr addresses the project in his articles, “‘We Know What the Problem Is’: Using Oral History to Develop a Collaborative Analysis of Homelessness from the Bottom Up,” in the Oral History Review, "Countering Corporate Narratives from the Streets: The Cleveland Homeless Oral History Project," in Oral History and Public Memories, “Cracking the Temp Trap: Day Laborers’ Grievances and Strategies for Change in Cleveland, Ohio,” in the Labor Studies Journal, and “‘Almost Like I am in Jail’ Homelessness and the Sense of Immobility in Cleveland, Ohio,” Journal Cultural Studies. The themes generated in the workshops for the project gave structure to his book, Derelict Paradise: Homelessness and Urban Development in Cleveland, Ohio.

: Cleveland Park: Site of Imagination; A neighborhood landmark, the Park & Shop is viewed as innovative by some and outdated by others. On April 27th, 2019, the Humanities Truck joined the Cleveland Park Farmers Market and gave visitors an opportunity to learn about the history of the Park & Shop and development in Cleveland Park. Along with an exhibit inside the Truck, viewers also drew neighborhood maps, and listened to and left stories about the neighborhood. American University Public History Master's students Isaac Makos, Maren Orchard, and Katie McCarthy researched and designed the Cleveland Park: Site of Imagination exhibit for their Spring 2019 Practicum class under the guidance of Professor Malgorzata Rymsza-Pawlowska. This collection contains photos from the event.