Because of my internship, I am feeling more like a historian and less like an imposter. I took a leap of faith when I started the Digital Public Humanities Certificate Program because I was starting over, leaving behind a conventional decade-long career in software development to pursue a long-held passion of public history. However, I felt at home working with the Pandemic Religion team this semester, leveraging theory into practice for the first time. The work has been inspiring, challenging, and engaging, and it felt really nice to take ownership of and participate in a living, breathing digital history project.
In our last team meeting this week, Lincoln said that he wasn’t sure how the semester was going to go, and I can attest to that sentiment! I know that I’ve mentioned this already, but the Pandemic Religion project is as innovative as it is challenging because we’re present-day historians preserving a present-day crisis for future historians. And on top of it, I don’t come from a religious background, so I wasn’t sure how connected I was going to feel to the project, let alone how I was going to create a digital exhibit that was even remotely palatable.
As it turns out, I got really engrossed in our collections, which are diverse, powerful, emotional, intimate, provocative – all things that provide a window into the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though we’re all living through the crisis together, it’s been moving to see how religious groups have responded. One of the overwhelming messages that I’ve taken away from this project is that people are resilient. My final exhibit showcases some of this resilience and how communities have taken a challenging moment, leveraged a little creativity, showed a little adaptability, and kept moving forward.
Looking back now, it’s obvious that I was going to connect with the project. Pandemic Religion is about people. History is about people. You can never stop unpacking human nature, whether it’s looking back or observing now.
Because of my internship, I am now a metadata ninja. The project is ongoing, with new items coming in regularly as well as new leads cropping up in all sorts of online outlets, so there are always more items to add and/or flesh out so that they’re as usable as possible for present and future audiences. Much of the first half of the semester entailed adding as much metadata as possible to the items and creating themes to track across the collections.
Because of my internship, I am able to create exhibits using Omeka S. The fact that I created a digital exhibit that’s going to be live in the Pandemic Religion project says everything about what it was like to be a part of this team. Jessica, John, and Lincoln embraced me and Bridget and trusted us enough, from the very beginning, to say, “Create an interpretive exhibit. Whatever interests you, follow it. Oh, and definitely add your by-line because this is your exhibit.” Seldom do internships promote such ownership and inclusivity! It’s been such an insightful experience for which I’m truly grateful.
