Vietnam War / American War Stories: A Symposium on Conflict and Civic Engagement is designed to examine the potential for civic engagement with archives like Vietnam War / American War Stories in the context of public humanities discourse and initiatives, and will include theoretical and practical explorations around crowdsourcing, curricula-building, and broader forms of outreach and engagement by scholars and citizens alike. The outcomes from these discussions will inform the ongoing development of the Vietnam War / American War Stories digital archive. We are particularly interested in:
- profiling types of materials that veterans or those touched by the Vietnam War are eager to share
- corroborating those materials with content held by individuals, military, state, and national archives
- modeling the materials along with the documentary content to establish the necessary connections between the two
- exploring options for more automated submission and review of contributed content
- identifying the barriers (i.e., demographics, geospatial, etc.) for receiving this content and potential
The symposium’s full schedule and roster of speakers is available here. The organizers are Ron Osgood, Professor Emeritus, IU Media School; Patrick Shih, Assistant Professor, IU Department of Informatics; Barbara Truesdell, Assistant Director of the Center for Documentary Research and Practice; and Michelle Dalmau, Associate Librarian and Head of Digital Collections Services, IU Libraries. The symposium is supported by a New Frontiers grant provided by the Office of the Vice President for Research.