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Cleveland Homeless Oral History Project
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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.
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Community Voice Project Collaborative Film Initiative
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Faculty Fellow Laura Waters Hinson used the Humanities Truck to run a community engagement project to take the 2019 Community Voice Project (an organization that produces short documentaries and digital stories that capture the voices of DC community storytellers too often unseen and unheard) Film Series to non-profits across the city. The aim is to honor each specific community and to promote critical dialogue among these DC storytellers, their communities, and our students, arriving at a community interpretation of what these stories mean on a collective level.
This collection contains documentation from the screenings and events.
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Day Laborer Exhibit 2016
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Photos taken by the day laborers themselves and later edited for color by American University's alumni Virginia Garino who worked as Ludy Grandas' assistant with the Humanities Truck.
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DC History Conference 2019
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The annual D.C. History Conference provides a dynamic, friendly, and rigorous forum for discussing and promoting original research about the history and culture of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The Humanities Truck took part in the 2019 Conference on Friday, November 22nd, presenting the exhibit “Downtown Displaced: A Case Study of Gentrification in Mount Vernon Square 1840-Present.” The exhibit emerged from a four month collaboration with Street Sense artists, and it explores the social costs of neighborhood change in a long temporal context. On Saturday, November 23rd, the Truck returned for a “performance” that included Street Sense artists Reggie Black, Angie Whitehurst, and DC filmmaker Bryan Bello. The artists/vendors provided their own interpretation of the neighborhood change and the meaning of Apple moving into Mt. Vernon Square. Also on Saturday, AU Public History students shared about their experiences collaborating with DC community partners for this project at the “Collaborating for a Community History” conference panel. This exhibit contains photos from the event.
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From Me To You: A COVID-19 Oral History Project
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Spreading from individual to individual, COVID-19 has moved across the planet with remarkable speed and devastating consequence. With its tragic trail, the virus illustrates how closely humanity is interconnected. People across the world have embraced physical distance as a strategy to slow the spread of COVID-19 and reduce its harm. While physically apart, we realize how much we need to be together. Close personal connection is what enables us to survive and what allows us to thrive.
https://humanitiestruck.com/frommetoyou/
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Group Portrait Journey in DC
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With the current political climate, there is a strong need to showcase our connection with people of all kinds, rather than what separates us. For this reason, Faculty Fellow Naoko Wowsugi created Group Portrait Journey in D.C., which is a series of group portraits that will visually trace the intersectional nature of personal identity and our intangible connections as one large community in Washington, DC. The goal of the project is to document a series of social groups in formal portraits over the course of a year that will visually show how, through one individual, diverse groups within the city are connected to one another. In the process, the project will explore what we mean by the word “group” and invite participants to elaborate on their own notions of belonging—and perhaps surprise viewers by showing how many social roles one person can occupy. The project is part documentary, part archive, part participatory, and part community art. This collection contains documentation from the project, which was cut short by COVID-19.
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Historic African River Road Connections
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The Historic African River Road Project is a collaboration between students and faculty of the AU anthropology department and Montgomery County, MD communities originally founded during the Reconstruction Era by free and formerly-enslaved people of African descent. Begun as a class project aimed at using the tools of ethnography to support the River Road, Scotland and Tobytown communities in their struggles against displacement and the desecration of their cemeteries, it has grown into a collaborative effort to document and celebrate the rich histories of these communities on a larger scale. In 2018, the AU Library Archives opened its Historic African River Road Connections (HARRC) Collection. In 2019, project participants are excited to make use of the Humanities Truck in the interactive, on-site analysis and curation of community documents, artifacts, and oral histories, and in conducting other forms of ethnographic research in preparation for curating the Summer 2019 Katzen Museum Historic African River Road exhibit.
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Homeless Memorial Vigil 2018
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The People for Fairness Coalition hosted its 6th annual Homeless Persons Memorial Vigil from evening on December 20, 2018 to midday on December 21, 2018. The event honors those who have died while homeless in the nation’s capital and elsewhere. The Humanities Truck attended the vigil, presenting an exhibit on the history of the CCNV shelter.
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Homeless Memorial Vigil 2019
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The People for Fairness Coalition hosted its 7th annual Homeless Persons Memorial Vigil took place overnight between December 19 and 20, 2019. The event honors those who have died while homeless in the nation’s capital and elsewhere. The Humanities Truck attended the vigil, presenting an exhibit titled Downtown Displaced, about gentrification in Mount Vernon Square.
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Homeless Memorial Vigil 2023
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On December 20, 2023 the Humanities Truck participated in the Homeless Memorial Vigil where we documented both the parade and main event.
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Humanities Truck Film Festival 2023
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Humanities Truck Film Festival 2023; a Humanities Truck hosted film festival showing the work of five project fellows from the past few years.
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Indigenous Peoples' Day 2020
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The Indigenous Peoples' Day celebration and rally took place on October 17, 2020 at Malcolm X Park. The event highlighted Indigenous people's activism and visibility along with cross-cultural partnerships through speeches and musical performances. This collection features interviews and images from the 2020 Indigenous Peoples' Day celebration.
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Jornaleros: Manos Invisibles / Day Laborers: Invisible Hands
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Faculty Fellow Ludy Grandas worked with Trabajadores Unidos de Washington, DC (TUWDC) to document "hard to count populations" (by the Census Bureau) specifically, day laborer and Afro-Latino immigrant lives.
One component of this project, Jornaleros: Manos Invisibles / Day Laborers: Invisible Hands, is a group exhibition of ten day laborers who photographed their own everyday lives as jornaleros using their cell phone cameras. Through their eyes, the day laborers’ goal was to open an invisible yet all too present world to us; to take us through their day, to share their reality, one that for some is hopefully temporary but for others is a whole way of life. Put together, the photos take us from morning to evening and all that happens in between.
The other part of this project aims to make more visible Afro-Latinos in DC through panel discussions and interviews.
This collection contains documentations from the various exhibit showings and related events.
This collection contains documentation from the different exhibit showings and related events.
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Knickerbocker Theater Disaster Anniversary
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On January 29, 2022 at the Adams Morgan Plaza, the Humanities Truck joined Adams Morgan neighborhood residents for a memorial ceremony commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Knickerbocker Theatre disaster, during which the theater's roof caved in and crushed nearly 100 people. The Truck will hosted a photo exhibit of the disaster and its aftermath, curated by Nancy Shia. People also gave speeches about the disaster's impact on their ancestors and the community. Collection contains photos and an interview from the event.
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"Let's Go-Go Back" Family Late Skate in Anacostia Park
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The Humanities Truck joined the National Park Service for Late Skate at Anacostia Park Roller Skating Pavilion. During the event, community members, neighbors, family, and friends host cookouts and gather at the pavilion to skate and do family-oriented activities including face painting. At three separate events, in June, July, and August, we conducted brief interviews with community members about the importance of Anacostia Park to the neighborhood including themes about go-go music and skating. After recording, we would play the interviews on the opposite side of the truck to quickly allow narrators and passers-by and spectators to see themselves and hear their story.
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