Unit 3: Imagining the Future
Unit 3: Remembering the Middle Passage
“Data is the evidence of terror, and the idea of data as fundamental and objective information…obscures rather than reveals the scene of the crime.”
-Jessica Marie Johnson, “Markup Bodies: Black [Life] Studies and Slavery [Death] Studies at the Digital Crossroads.” Social Text 36.4 (Dec. 2018).
“Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs?
Where is your tribal memory? Sirs,
in that grey vault. The sea. The sea
has locked them up. The sea is History.”
-Derek Walcott
Important Due Dates:
Friday, 4/5: UNIT 3 FEEDER 1 DUE BY MIDNIGHT
Friday, 4/12: UNIT 3 FEEDER 2 DUE BY MIDNIGHT
Monday, 4/22: UNIT 3 PROJECT DUE BY MIDNIGHT
The Middle Passage, the route by which most enslaved persons were brought across the Atlantic to North America, is a critical locus of modern history—yet it has been notoriously difficult to document or memorialize. For a long time, as Derek Walcott demonstrates, the most accessible way to approach this history was through the illuminating imagination of a poet or fiction writer. Recently, however, new interdisciplinary approaches, including digital methods of aggregating data, have rendered aspects of the Middle Passage freshly intelligible.The ultimate aim of this project is to employ the resources of digital mapping technologies as well as the humanistic methods of history, literature, philosophy, and other disciplines to envision how best to memorialize the enslaved persons who lost their lives between their homelands and North America.
| Genre | Purpose | Audience | Writer’s Role | Exigence (Rhetorical Situation) |
| Story Map
|
To create an argument on where a memorial to the middle passage would be and why.
|
General Public
|
Public Digital Humanist
|
The Duke Marine Science and Conservation Division based at the Marine Lab in Beaufort has asked for your assistance for determining where a memorial for the middle passage should go. You will need to convince them and a host of other organizations that your location is the most appropriate. |
Step 1 (3/18/19):
Explore using the Database: http://www.slavevoyages.org
Think about what it includes and how accurate the accounts are.
Step 2 (3/20-3/22):
Using the Special Collections at Wilson Library and our Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wCYVkRdqxFtLViLKkiTHroOlURxLa_f5FB9EA-jNieU/edit
Step 3 (4/5/19):
Write a 300-400 word rough draft using 1-2 sources about the slave voyages database (the Johnson article can be one of these sources), should you use the database to figure out where to put the monument or should you use a story/account? Also, fill out your StoryBoard for the project and include it in your Feeder 1 submission.
UNIT 3 FEEDER 1 DUE AT MIDNIGHT
Step 4 (4/8/19)
Figure out how to use ArcGIS Online
Using ARCGIS ONLINE
Select of these maps to provide more context to the voyages and search for other maps to work with your StoryMap:
Step 6 (4/10-4/12/19)
Feeder 2: Where do you want to place the monument?
Using your existing rough draft as a base, create a 600-800 word draft on where you would like to place the memorial and why. Ensure you have all your slides created for your StoryMap as well.
UNIT 3 FEEDER 2 DUE AT MIDNIGHT 4/12/19
Step 5 (4/15-4/22/19):
Unit Project: StoryMap
Create a 4-5 slide StoryMap about your proposal on where the middle passage memorial should go. Ensure you use at least a qualitative source from a primary account of the middle passage.
Here is the Rubric
Examples of StoryMaps:
HOPE VI St. Louis https://arcg.is/95ayD
The Legacy of Pruitt-Igoe on the St. Louis Metro Area https://arcg.is/1POmGi
From No Credit to Bad Credit https://arcg.is/9XX88
Housing Choice Vouchers in St. Louis https://arcg.is/10CK9W
HOPE VI and Its Effect on Neighborhood Change in St. Louis, MO: https://arcg.is/0TLe1P
LIHTC and Segregation in St. Louis: https://arcg.is/5aT4D
UNIT 3 PROJECT DUE AT MIDNIGHT 4/22/19