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Scholars Use Sights and Sounds to Present History

Richard Rabinowitz, president of American History Workshop, speaks about visual representations of history at an event at the Forum for Scholars and Publics.
Richard Rabinowitz, president of American History Workshop, speaks about visual representations of history at an event at the Forum for Scholars and Publics.

Photographs, audio clips, interactive maps and recreated scenes can be compelling media for representing historical events, a group of scholars told about 50 attendees at an event Wednesday at Duke's Forum for Scholars and Publics.

The panelists at "History Beyond Text" presented examples of how they have used images, sounds and physical objects to convey aspects of history. (Watch a recording of the discussion.)

Richard Rabinowitz and Lynda Kaplan from the American History Workshop explained how they helped stage an exhibit about political revolutions at the New-York Historical Society museum that included a recreated 18th-century tavern.

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The exhibition included an original copy of the Haitian Declaration of Independence, first identified by Julia Gaffield when she was a graduate student at Duke. Gaffield, now an assistant professor at Georgia State University, described to the attendees her experience speaking with the news media about her discovery.

"The way you tell the story [to a non-academic audience] is different," Gaffield said. "The narrative is much more important."

Duke historian Phil Stern worked with students to curate the "Defining Lines" exhibition at the Nasher Museum of Art. The collection, drawn from the Rubenstein Library, highlights how maps were used by colonial empires.

Stern said he uses multimedia in his teaching. "I keep insisting that students use an image for every thousand words," he said.

"History Beyond Text" seminar

An audience of about 50 people attend a conversation at the Forum for Scholars and Publics about using multimedia to document historical events.