Did you know that Big Mama Thornton first recorded Elvis Presley’s big hit “Hound Dog” in 1953,” for Peacock Records, based in Houston’s Fifth Ward? Do you want to visit archives at UH and other repositories as part of your research on the history of Houston’s music from the 1920s-the 1960s? Join our unique research project that focuses on collecting, analyzing, and refining data for a digital humanities project, The Gulf Coast Sound: Music in East Texas Coastal Region. You will have the opportunity to research on and write about Houston musicians, bands, studios, and record labels, and your work will be essential in creating content for our digital humanities project.

REACH students will learn how to conduct primary and secondary source research and engage in it. Outside of three archives visits, the project work will be virtual, with weekly scheduled check-ins with the project team.

Contacts

• • Mary Manning: mmmanning@uh.edu

The Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage Program’s US Latino Digital Humanities (USLDH) program serves as a venue for scholarship focused on the US Latino written legacy that has been lost, absent, repressed or underrepresented. The USLDH program provides a physical space for the development, support and training in digital humanities projects using a vast collection of historical newspapers, photographs and digital materials; creates opportunities and facilities for digital publication of Latino-based projects and scholarship; promotes and fosters interdisciplinary scholarly work; provides a communal virtual space to share knowledge and projects related to Latino digital humanities; and establishes a Latino digital humanities hub.

REACH students will work with Latino archival materials in different capacities from handling and arrangement of historical collections to digital projects of the recovered items that include manuscripts, photographs, newspapers, correspondence, etc. The students will receive training in archival procedures, digital humanities tools and theory.

Contacts

• Lorena Gauthereau: lgauthereau@uh.edu
• Gabriela Baeza Ventura: gbaeza@central.uh.edu
• Carolina Villarroel: cvillarroel@uh.edu
• Mikaela Selley: mgselley@central.uh.edu
• Website: https://artepublicopress.com/projects/

Initiated with the Center for Public History and Digital Humanities program at UH in summer 2024, our project attempts to revisualize the Houston old Chinatown. Leveraging existing resources such as archives from the Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston public library, Asian American Center at Rice and community-led initiatives, our project delves into these existing findings of the Chinese immigrant communities, and re-presents to the public with digital products in the end. By incorporating archival data, business directory, and personal narratives, we hope to create an interactive spatial installation that will provide a comprehensive view of the diverse Chinese experiences in Houston, providing educational and public accessible research material. This year we will continue some archival research, explore possible outlets for our spatial representations like VR/AR, storymap, timeline, etc. We will also look for external grants to apply to continue the project. The REACH intern will have the opportunity to be a part of all these.

Contacts

• • Melody Yunzi Li: mli40@central.uh.edu
  • Guadalupe San Miguel: gsanmiguel@uh.edu

What could seem more concrete, yet difficult to pin down, than the notion of a “year”? This project aims to convey some of the surprises of thinking through 1771, a single year in the literature and culture of the eighteenth-century British empire, as it was experienced by writers in three distinct locations: London, Edinburgh, and Philadelphia. And yet this single year, when viewed from the perspective of three major cities of the British Atlantic world, contains multitudes as well as an encyclopedic assortment of writing. The writings of this year, now increasingly digitized, are now available for inquiry and analysis in ways unimaginable to scholars even a few decades ago. These approaches should help us learn how to tell new stories about the authors and printers of this year, the genres they produced, and their responses to the year’s events.

The 1771 team is seeking student research assistants for its ongoing digital humanities project, which has already resulted in one collaboratively authored, peer-reviewed scholarly article and a forthcoming website to accompany its findings. The position will entail data entry and cleaning, along with some scholarly and editorial work associated with the project dataset and accompanying website. Though previous experience in digital research is not necessary, desirable candidates will be quick studies, good problem solvers, detail-oriented, and comfortable with technology.

Contacts

• David Mazella: mazella@central.uh.edu

Additional Resources

• Article: "All the modes of story": Genre and the Gendering of Authorship in the Year 1771"
• The Year 1771 Project Website