Public & Digital History
The Center for Public History & Digital Humanities, along with the Department of History at Cleveland State University, has curated or otherwise assisted in the creation of multiple online history exhibits, as well as numerous public history programs.
Our website for the Cleveland Cultural Gardens, featuring student-collected images and oral history audio clips, has drawn praise from visitors from around the globe and the site’s design (by Epstein Design Partners) has garnered multiple awards. The Euclid Corridor Oral History Project has also drawn attention to CSU’s innovative approach to public history. Working again with Epstein Design, students and researchers from the department have worked hard to bring local history out of the dustbins and into the streets, where Euclid Avenue pedestrians can now view historic images, read about historic sites and themes, and listen to digital oral history clips — all on RTA’s innovative touchscreen kiosks.
Graduate and undergraduate history students at CSU are encouraged to participate in internships in the community. As they carry out original research at institutions throughout the region, students routinely uncover useful and previously hidden historical materials. By collecting and publishing some of these materials online at Teaching & Learning Cleveland, we have begun the long overdue task of sharing and preserving the valuable work done by history students. We are also employing a similar strategy to preserve and publish the work done by public school teachers in our Teaching American History workshop series.
The Center also manages CSU’s impressive oral history collection — over 500 interviews to date, since 2002. Most interviews have been coordinated and conducted by students in the History Department, under the supervision and training of faculty and field practitioners. We are currently in the process of publishing these interviews to the web, where the collection will be the largest online digital oral history collection in the region and one of the largest in the country. For more information, please visit the Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection page on this site.
The Center for Public History & Digital humanities is dedicated to bringing a pioneering approach to public history through projects that make use of emerging digital technologies. Our focus is on enriching the student experience, cultivating advanced pedagogical skills in the region’s public school teachers, and reaching out to the public through creative and collaborative programming. For a sample of some of our projects in the community, visit the Collaborative Projects page.
For more information or to collaborate, please contact Dr. Mark Tebeau at: (216) 687-3937 or m.tebeau@csuohio.edu
