The goal of “The Black Gotham Digital Archive” is to link an interactive web site, smart phones, and the geographical spaces of Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn to create a deeper understanding of nineteenth-century black New York. The project is an extension of my book, Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City (Yale UP, 2011), as I seek new media . . . Read More
I’m back (for now at least)!
So I have committed the unpardonable sin that every blogger is told NEVER to do. Let my blog and archive go and simply ignore them for over a year! To be honest letter writing has never been my forte and so I shouldn’t expect blogging to be either. And since I was reared and disciplined in a culture of the book, the idea of a digital archive as a piece of writing that is NEVER finished is still very foreign to me. Maybe this new technology simply isn’t for me.
But I’m not going to give up yet. With the new academic year just starting, I’m hoping to turn over a new leaf! You’ll notice that I’ve already added a lot of new material to the archive, especially in the “Gotham” exhibit, but also in others. I actually found it exhilarating to turn back to this material and to be able to add so many images that I couldn’t put in my book.
I’m just hoping that my promise to keep up the blog and archive isn’t an empty given that I am winging my way toward Bhutan in just a matter of hours and will be away for about three weeks with no Internet access. This trip is a long-held dream of mine finally coming true and maybe it will inspire me to be more diligent.
So check out this space in November!