BostonDH 2025
I'm co-presenting a paper at BostonDH 2025.
The Ground Beneath Our Feet: Critical Mapping in the Classroom
Kelley Kreitz (Pace University); Anindita Basu Sempere, Jamie Folsom (Performant Software)
The Ground Beneath Our Feet is a place-based, experiential humanities research and curriculum initiative at Pace University that was launched in Fall 2024, with support from a NEH Humanities Initiatives grant and the university’s Student Technology Fee Fund. Students in affiliated courses research and document the history and the communities surrounding Pace campuses, using critical mapping to juxtapose their contemporary, firsthand experiences of Lower Manhattan and the Hudson Valley with their place-centered research. Course topics include New York City's 19th Century Spanish-Language Press, Hurricane Sandy, Counter-Mapping Governance and Community, and Cultural Cartography, and the data and project maps can be related and/or layered to show intersections and differences between datasets. Through custom-built, open source tools, the Ground Beneath Our Feet platform provides support for different types of place-centered storytelling: Places (a searchable map), Posts (essays with embedded places), and Paths (curated sequences of places).
This talk will describe the overall vision of this project, the supporting technologies, the initial round of critical mapping in the classroom, and next steps based on student and instructor feedback. As we discuss the pedagogical importance of providing multiple tools for combining data and narrative in studies of place, we will also share our process, realizations, successes, and challenges as we seek to empower students to put technology to work for what Ruja Benjamin calls “retooling solidarity, reimagining social justice.”[1] We look forward to sharing ideas and experiences with participants.
