Ethnic Layers of Detroit (ELD) is an interdisciplinary urban-focused digital humanities project engaging faculty and student researchers in creating, documenting, and sharing multilayered multimedia narratives of Detroit’s ethnic histories. Through the pairing of digital technologies and archival resources, we are developing a rich collection of digital stories tracing the roots and following the routes of local ethnic groups. Through such storytelling, we hope to engage our audiences with the colorful, dynamic and often forgotten and untold history of Detroit. ELD was awarded a Digital Humanities Start-up Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The main goal of the ELD project is to create digital stories showcasing the cultural histories of different ethnic groups that built the city of Detroit. Our group is developing a digital portal that will inform students, scholars and community members about the cultural, linguistics, and historical background of different landmarks in Detroit. This digital portal will use augmented reality technology that allows users to interact with points of interest within a real-world environment via images, audio, and video displayed on a screen. For instance, users could hold up a tablet or smartphone at a historical landmark, monument, or building in Detroit and see a historical image of the building superimposed on their view of the building in real-time.
The project team of ELD is comprised of six interdisciplinary researchers from Wayne State University and the University of Wisconsin with backgrounds in language, literature, culture, anthropology and instructional technology. ELD has been awarded a number of grants, including two WSU Humanities Center Working Group grants, a WSU (Foreign Language Technology Center) Mini-Grant, and, most recently, a Digital Humanities Start-up Grant (Level 2) from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). As part of the pilot phase of the ELD project, we selected six historical sites in Detroit and completed digital stories on them. Having won the Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant (Level 2) from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and other grants, we hope to complete 20 to 25 digital stories about additional sites in Detroit in the coming months. Explore this website to learn about the beginnings and development of ELD, the historic sites selected for the narratives, ways to interact with and experience the digital stories via augmented reality and the web portal, and pedagogical applications of the project.
Although most ELD stories are currently being created by ELD members, students and volunteers have also made important contributions to the project, and we hope for more student and community involvement in the project as we grow. If you’re interested in participating in this project, learn how you can volunteer!
The ELD story
The ELD story is one that illustrates the role of small ideas in spawning bigger ones. It all started in March 2012 with Julie Koehler’s brown bag presentation at WSU’s Foreign Language Technology Center (FLTC) on “The iPad in the Classroom“ organized by Sangeetha Gopalakrishnan. As part of her presentation on how she was integrating the iPad into the German language classroom, Julie talked about the German Traces of NYC project which involves digital storytelling about sites in NYC that have German histories. Laura Kline and Felecia Lucht attended the brown bag and were intrigued by the German Traces of NYC project. We spontaneously began tossing around the idea of replicating this project for Detroit. Soon Alina Klin and Krysta Ryzewski were invited to join the conversation because of their areas of expertise, and the ELD group was unofficially formed in summer 2012.
We became an official working group in October 2012 when we received a Humanities Center Working Group grant. The Humanities Center’s $800 Working Group grant facilitated meetings throughout the 2012-2013 academic year and consultations with experts. In summer 2013 we applied for a Foreign Language Technology Center (FLTC) Mini-Grant that helped us develop a pilot project. As a Healthy Communities Work Group (HCWG) we also decided to explore avenues for external grant funding such as the NEH digital humanities grants. The pilot digital stories we developed that summer served as proof of concept when we applied to the NEH for a digital humanities start-up grant in September 2013. The WSU Humanities Center along with several other institutions and individuals played an important role in supporting our NEH application by writing enthusiastic letters of support. We also received another Humanities Center Working Group grant of $600 in October 2013 to continue our work.
To our great delight, in March 2014, we received the $60,000 NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up grant. Our most significant accomplishment over the last three years has been the completion of 25 digital stories on various historic sites and landmarks in Detroit. We have also presented about the ELD project at numerous conferences, conducted multiple workshops on digital storytelling for faculty, students and community members, and incorporated some of the ELD digital stories into WSU courses. The grant period of 18 months has been extended until November 2016. You can watch our completed digital stories.
Project timeline
- Julie Koehler’s FLTC Brown Bag: “The iPad in the Classroom“ (March 2012)
- Inspiration: German Traces of NYC
- Humanities Center Working Group (October 2012; 2013)
- Foreign Language Technology Center (FLTC) Mini-Grant (summer 2013)
- Pilot project (summer 2013)
- Applied for the NEH grant (fall 2013)
- Received NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant (March 2014)
- Anticipated NEH grant period completion (November 2016)