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| Vol. XII, No.1 | A newsletter devoted to the support of teaching and learning at the University of Pittsburgh |
Sept. 2006
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U N I V E R S I T Y O F P I T T S B U R G H |
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| Vol. XII, No.1 | A newsletter devoted to the support of teaching and learning at the University of Pittsburgh |
Sept. 2006
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Pittsburgh through Teenie Harris’ PhotographsLaurence Glasco and Maurine Greenwald’s 2006 ACIE project, Image and Content: Viewing Black Pittsburgh through Teenie Harris’ Photographs, will support the development of an innovative, upper level history course to capitalize on the historic and instructional value of the Teenie Harris photography collection recently acquired by the Carnegie Museum of Art. Collaboration between the Museum, the Pennsylvania Room of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, and the University of Pittsburgh is bringing to fruition a course that has been envisioned for years. The University’s relationship to the Harris archive dates to the 1970s, when it was briefly housed at the University. Additionally, Pitt’s Glasco has advised the Harris family and estate and the Carnegie Museum of Art since 1999. Also, the Museum has worked with the University’s Digital Research Library to place the Harris images online on the Historic Pittsburgh Web site, and it continues to collaborate with the University on related projects, such as The Pittsburgh Courier archive. The 80,000 piece collection, originally published in The Courier , documents three decades of Black urban history. Its availability encourages a novel social-scientific approach to teaching historic analysis and interpretation skills to aspiring historians. For example, Greenwald and Glasco note the divergent impressions created by a photo of White firemen violently hosing Blacks during civil rights protests in Birmingham, Alabama, and a Harris photo in Pittsburgh showing a White fireman gently hosing a group of Black children on a scorching summer day. Students will generate original interpretations from such photographs and expand their research through subsequent analysis of accompanying columns from The Courier . ACIE funds will be used to hire students to review microfilms of The Courier and digitize weekly columns chronicling music, sports, and the Hill District to accompany the Harris photos, many of which are available online at both the Carnegie Museum of Art Web site <www.cmoa.org> and the University of Pittsburgh’s Historic Pittsburgh Image Collections Web site <http://digital.library.pitt.edu/pghphotos>. The Museum plans to provide Web access to its collections database sometime in 2006; users (including students in the Glasco/Greenwald course) will have access to over 16,000 catalogue records and 13,000 scans of Harris images. Digitized columns will be linked to the available photographs to provide a rich and unique historical repository of the Black experience in urban America in the ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s and an inclusive social and historical context of the times for instruction and research. Digitized materials will be distributed to students on DVDs. Enrollment for the course is expected to be 20 students. The size of the Harris collection and the inclusive, multidisciplinary nature of the database will provide a unique instructional resource.
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A newsletter devoted to the support of teaching and learning at the University of Pittsburgh |
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