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.

Pages

: 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.

: Lunar New Year 2024; Lunar New Year event, February 11, 2024

: 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.

: Pride 2023

: Visual AIDS Day With(out) Art 2023; Visual AIDS Day With(out) Art 2023, December 1, 2023, at Studio Walbridge House

: Homeless Memorial Vigil 2023; On December 20, 2023 the Humanities Truck participated in the Homeless Memorial Vigil where we documented both the parade and main event.

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

: Adams Morgan Day 2023

: Humanities Truck Film Festival 2023; Humanities Truck Film Festival 2023; a Humanities Truck hosted film festival showing the work of five project fellows from the past few years.

: Columbia Heights Day 2023; Photographs from Columbia Heights Day 2023

: Staughton and Alice Lynd; A collection of photos and interviews with Staughton and Alice Lynd

: Paul Robeson 2023; For the second year in a row, The Humanities Truck partnered with several community partners to host “Artists are the Gatekeepers of Truth: Paul Robeson’s 125th Birthday Celebration.” Parked on the corner of Georgia Ave and Kansas Ave, speakers including special guest Uzikee Nelson joined to celebrate black art, community, and culture.

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

: Shove Off Day at City Point 2023; On May 25, 2023, the Humanities Truck went to City Point to celebrate Shove Off Day, recording short-form oral histories and written responses on what Juneteenth means to event attendees.

: Preserving the Picket Line

: Preserving the Picket Line

: Mobilizing Against Homelessness

: Cruising DC Oral History Project; A collection of interviews that explore the history of cruising in DC, created by Kai Walther

: Malcolm X Park

: Homeless Memorial Vigil 2022