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.

: 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 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.

: American University Class of 1968: 1968 Retrospective; As part of the Golden Eagles Reunion, the Humanities Truck partnered with the American University archives to present the Class of 1968 exhibit on the AU quad Friday, October 19th, 2018. Archivists Leslie Nellis and Austin Arminio collaborated with Graduate Fellow Maren Orchard and Humanities Truck Director Dan Kerr to create the exhibit. In addition to numerous captioned photos, a slideshow of nostalgic photographs played while an infamous speech by Hubert Humphrey sounded throughout the grounds. This collection contains photos, exhibit information, and oral histories from the event.

: 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.

: AU Scholars Exhibition; On April 13, 2019 on the American University Quad, two classes from the AU Scholars Program presented the culmination of their semester-long research projects. Displayed inside the truck, students in Dan Kerr's class put together an exhibit about the history of the Community for Creative Nonviolence in DC. On the outside the truck, students from Martyn Oliver's class presented their exhibit on religious minorities in DC.

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

: 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.

: Commemoration of the Battle of Fort Stevens 2019; In partnership with the Alliance to the Preserve the Civil War Defenses of Washington (CWDW), the 2019 Commemoration of the Battle of Fort Stevens, held on July 13, 2019, featured living history demonstrations, including cannon and musket fire, period music, children activities, lectures by noted historians, and guided-walk from Fort Stevens to Walter Reed National Medical Center, and a dedication and flag-laying at Battleground National Cemetery. The Humanities Truck presented an exhibit on the history of the CWDW and Fort Stevens. This collections features photos from the event.

: Community Voice Project Collaborative Film Initiative; 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.

: DC History Conference 2018; The annual D.C. History Conference, formerly known as the Annual Conference on Washington, D.C. Historical Studies, is a collaboration among the Historical Society of Washington, D.C., George Washington University, the DC Public Library, and the DC Office of Public Records. Since 1973, the mission of the conference has been to provide a dynamic, friendly, and rigorous forum for discussing and promoting original research about the history and culture of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. At the 2018 conference on November 2, 2018, the Humanities Truck presented a pop-up exhibit titled "Whose Downtown," created by Dan Kerr and charting the history of the Community for Creative Non-Violence (CCNV) shelter. This collection contains photos from the event.

: DC History Conference 2019; 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.

: DC History Conference 2022; The DC History Conference is an interdisciplinary, community conference considering the past, present, and future of the District. After two years without a conference in 2020 and 2021, the event returned in 2022, this time with free admission. The conference took place March 31-April 2, 2022. The Humanities Truck set up outside of the conference venue at the MLK Jr Memorial Library on April 1 and presented 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. In addition to the exhibit, the truck team hosted a mapping activity and conducted oral history interviews about people's experiences in the changing downtown area of Washington, DC. This collection contains photos from the event.

: Downtown Displaced; The Downtown Displaced project involved an extensive collaboration between the Humanities Truck, Dan Kerr and students from his Engaged Community History course, and the Street Sense Media Filmmakers Cooperative. Collection contains photos from planning and creation of Downtown Displaced: A Case Study of Gentrification in Mount Vernon Square, 1840-Present exhibit, for which Dan Kerr's Engaged Community History class collaborated with Street Sense Media artists during the Spring 2019 academic semester. The exhibit explores the social costs of neighborhood change in a long temporal context. Collection also contains photos from May 20, 2019, when the exhibit was presented to the Street Sense Media collaborators. In June, the filmmakers co-op did a performance at the Carnegie Library, which drew upon this research.