There have been several points in my academic career that have led me to beautiful and historic Greenwood Cemetery in Orlando, Florida. I have been fortunate enough to volunteer with Greenwood as their volunteer research assistant for the past few months and am thrilled to announce that I will be interning with them during the summer semester to work on their digital cemetery project! This project will hopefully soon be able to take flight as grant funding is waiting in the wings. However, in the meantime, I will be working on something special that might assist Greenwood with obtaining this grant.
The primary deliverable that I will be creating for Greenwood Cemetery during this internship is a digital walking tour. The initial tour will be a general overview of Greenwood’s and Orlando’s history. Additional themed tours will be created if time allows, including tours centered around Black history, women, military history, Orlando's early days, "spooky" themes, and something special that Greenwood and I have been working on which is tentatively titled "Gone but Not Forgotten."
These tours will most likely be hosted on Clio, which Dr. David Trowbridge explains is “an innovative digital format that will instantly reach a broad audience in ways that cannot be replicated by traditional forms of publishing” (Trowbridge). By using this digital tool, I will be able to create something that is easy to use and accessible for the public as well as meeting the high standards of accuracy that are desired by the City of Orlando. However, I am also keenly aware that as technology changes, so too do mediums of digital display. Thus, I will be presenting my research to Greenwood in a basic textual format as well so that it can be easily utilized on other mediums as needed.
The main goals of the tours are to bolster Greenwood's historical presence, increase public engagement, and showcase the history of Orlando held within Greenwood. To foster public engagement, I will be creating a simple survey to gauge what the Orlando public knows and what they're interested in learning. This will be helpful for me, methodologically speaking, so I will be prioritizing this as the information provided might help inform my interpretations. As highlighted by Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen in The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life, the key to public engagement often rests on the language used (Rosenzweig and Thelen 1998, 31-32). For example, “the past” holds a more positive association than “history” and non-academic sources that establish credibility are often perceived as more trustworthy by the public. Some of the factors explored in Rosenzweig and Thelen’s study indicate the best way to engage public interest lies in finding a way to center the audience in the story and build on themes like identity and immortality. I will certainly be keeping these concepts in mind as I craft the well-cited narratives used for these walking tours.
This week, I met with Danielle Abdul-Nabi, Records and Cemetery Manager, to lay out my plan and make sure that I'll be able to meet (and hopefully exceed!) Greenwood's needs. I am very excited to dig deeper into Orlando's history and produce something of value for the public! Stay tuned for weekly updates on my progress!
Works Cited:
Rosenzweig, Roy and David Thelen. The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.
Trowbridge, David. “About Clio.” Clio. Accessed May 15, 2023, https://www.theclio.com/about
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