Why do people migrate? Where do they go? What risks and rewards do people face when they are on the move? What are the challenges and benefits for places of reception? How does migration transform individuals, families, and towns? What can we learn about the living history of migration by collecting oral histories and conducting archival research?
In the spring of 2018, students from five public liberal arts colleges explored these questions as part of a public digital humanities course called Voices of Migration: An Oral History Collective. Pairs of students from Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, University of Maine at Farmington, University of South Carolina at Aiken, Truman State University, and University of North Carolina at Asheville recorded the voices of their campuses’ communities. The project websites that they created document experiences and impacts of migration across the United States.
Instructors: Michelle Bettencourt, Associate Professor of Spanish, University of North Carolina at Asheville, and Olivia Donaldson, Assistant Professor of French, University of Maine at Farmington.
COPLACDigital: COPLACDigital is a Mellon Foundation-funded initiative to develop distance mentoring digital liberal arts courses across the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges consortium. COPLACDigital brings together faculty, students, archivists, and instructional technologists to collaborate in the public creation of knowledge.