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![“RiP!: A Remix Manifesto” (2008)
by Brett Gaylor, with mashup artist Girl Talk
Brett Gaylor and mashup artist Girl Talk explore copyright and content creation in the
digital age. In the process they dissect the media landscape of the 21st century and
shatter the wall between users and producers. [. . .]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/dm-final-111120220404-phpapp02/85/Dm-final-32-320.jpg)
![“About two minutes after I got [to Commerce], I noticed
that my name changed from John Carlos to Boy.”
--Carlos, New York Magazine, 1968](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/dm-final-111120220404-phpapp02/85/Dm-final-65-320.jpg)
Uploaded byShannon Carter
Dm final
This document discusses a project to develop a prototype that facilitates remixing various types of digitized primary sources. The prototype will be used to create web presentations on rhetorical constructions of race and race relations in rural Texas during the Civil Rights Movement. Key sources that will be remixed include materials about John Carlos' time at East Texas State University in the 1960s and Richard Wright's book "12 Million Black Voices" from 1941. The project aims to examine how creativity and innovation build upon the past within the constraints imposed by controls over the past. A project team at Texas A&M University-Commerce will lead the development of the prototype.
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- 1. Image: East TexasState Teachers College, 1948 Commerce, Texas Northeast Texas Digital Collections Shannon Carter, PhD Associate Professor of English Texas A&M-Commerce
- 3. Dene Grigar, WashingtonState University Mark Tebeau, Cleveland State University
- 4. “Pox in theCity” “Soul of a Place” PI: Lisa Rosner, Stockton College PI: Andrea Kalin and Nancy Camp, History of Medicine Stone Soup Productions, Inc.
- 5. • Tools forteaching humanities content (for example, apps, games) • Tools for research in the humanities (visualization tools, data mining tools)
- 8. Image: East TexasState Teachers College, 1948 Commerce, Texas Northeast Texas Digital Collections Shannon Carter, PhD Associate Professor of English Texas A&M-Commerce
- 9. Commerce, TX Greenville, TX John Carlos, ETSU Track Integration at “the State’s Most Team, 1966-1967 Democratic College” (1964) (Commerce, Texas) Olympics, 1968 (Mexico City) Black Power Runs Through Commerce Old Signs (1921-65), New Signs (installed 2008) Writing for (a) Change: Activist Rhetoric through University- Dallas, TX Community Partnerships (1973-78)
- 10. To support: Thedevelopment of a prototype for facilitating the "remixing" of various types of digitized primary sources for Web presentations (video) on rhetorical constructions of race and race relations in rural Texas within the broader historical context of the Civil Rights Movement.
- 12. Image: East TexasState Teachers College, 1948 Commerce, Texas Northeast Texas Digital Collections Funded in part Shannon Carter, PhD by Associate Professor of English Texas A&M-Commerce
- 17. “To compose isto create.” --“Composition,” CCC 2010 “Creativity and innovation always builds on the past.” --Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture, 2004 All minds quote. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. --Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Quotation and Originality” (Collected Works, 1904)
- 18. “Everything is aRemix” (2011) by Kerby Furguson “Remixing is a folk art but the techniques are the same ones used at any level of creation: copy, transform, and combine.” (Kerby Furguson)
- 19. Furguson, Kerby. “Everythingis a Remix: Part 3,” 2011.
- 20. Eduardo Navas, "Regressive andReflexive Mashups in Sampling Culture" (in Vague Terrian Journal, 2009, reprinted in Mashups Culture, 2010)
- 25. 1960 1920 Hannah Hoch Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany (1919)
- 26.
- 27. All minds quote.Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. …Every book is a quotation; and every home is a quotation out of all forests and mines and stone- quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors. (“Quotation and Originality”)
- 29.
- 31. Creativity and innovationalways builds on the past. The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it. Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past. Ours is less and less a free society.
- 32. “RiP!: A RemixManifesto” (2008) by Brett Gaylor, with mashup artist Girl Talk Brett Gaylor and mashup artist Girl Talk explore copyright and content creation in the digital age. In the process they dissect the media landscape of the 21st century and shatter the wall between users and producers. [. . .]
- 36. Commerce, TX Greenville, TX John Carlos, ETSU Track Integration at “the State’s Most Team, 1966-1967 Democratic College” (1964) (Commerce, Texas) Olympics, 1968 (Mexico City) Black Power Runs Through Commerce Old Signs (1921-65), New Signs (installed 2008) Writing for (a) Change: Activist Rhetoric through University- Dallas, TX Community Partnerships (1973-78)
- 38. John Carlos, EastTexas State University Track Team, 1966-1967 Commerce, Texas John Carlos, Olympics 1968 Mexico City
- 44. To support: Thedevelopment of a prototype for facilitating the "remixing" of various types of digitized primary sources for Web presentations (video) on rhetorical constructions of race and race relations in rural Texas within the broader historical context of the Civil Rights Movement.
- 46. To support: Thedevelopment of a prototype for facilitating the "remixing" of various types of digitized primary sources for Web presentations on the history of race and race relations in rural Texas.
- 47. 1900 1941 2011
- 48. Wright, Richard. 12Million Black Voices. Basic Books, 1941.
- 51. Wright, Richard. 12Million Black Voices. Basic Books, 1941.
- 53. “Soul of aPlace” PI: Andrea Kalin and Nancy Camp, Stone Soup Productions, Inc.
- 54. 1938 1940 1941 1945
- 55. Wright, Richard. 12Million Black Voices. Basic Books, 1941.
- 57. Furguson, Kerby. “Everythingis a Remix: Part 3,” 2011.
- 59. Commerce, TX Greenville, TX John Carlos, ETSU Track Integration at “the State’s Most Team, 1966-1967 Democratic College” (1964) (Commerce, Texas) Olympics, 1968 (Mexico City) Black Power Runs Through Commerce Old Signs (1921-65), New Signs (installed 2008) Writing for (a) Change: Activist Rhetoric through University- Dallas, TX Community Partnerships (1973-78)
- 61. Commerce, TX Greenville, TX John Carlos, ETSU Track Team, Integration at “the State’s Most 1966-1967 Democratic College” (1964) (Commerce, Texas) Olympics, 1968 (Mexico City) Black Power Runs Through Commerce Old Signs (1921-65), New Signs (installed 2008) Writing for (a) Change: Activist Rhetoric through University- Dallas, TX Community Partnerships (1973-78)
- 63. John Carlos, EastTexas State University Track Team, 1966-1967 Commerce, Texas
- 64. “Like most Harlemkids, I thought anyplace away from the ghetto would have to be beautiful. . . Texas was in the South but I was sure it was nothing like Mississippi or Alabama.” --Carlos, interview with New York Magazine reporter in 1968
- 65. “About two minutesafter I got [to Commerce], I noticed that my name changed from John Carlos to Boy.” --Carlos, New York Magazine, 1968
- 66. “Thinking about itnow, a guy like Carlos lasting a year and a half in a redneck town like Commerce is one of the most amazing records in track and field.” --Texan at 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, (New York Magazine, November 1968)
- 70.
- 78.
- 88. Project Team Shannon Carter,Project Director Andrea Weddle, Director of Special Collections (Gee Library) Michael Lewandowski, Media Specialist, Instructional Technology Jim Conrad, Professor Emeritus (former Director of Special Collections) Donna Dunbar-Odom, Professor of English, Department of Literature and Languages Kelly Dent, MA Student (Political Science) Sunchai Hacumpai, PhD Student (English)
- 89. To support: Thedevelopment of a prototype for facilitating the "remixing" of various types of digitized primary sources for Web presentations (video) on rhetorical constructions of race and race relations in rural Texas within the broader historical context of the Civil Rights Movement.
- 90. To support: Thedevelopment of a prototype for facilitating the "remixing" of various types of digitized primary sources for Web presentations (video) on rhetorical constructions of race and race relations in rural Texas within the broader historical context of the Civil Rights Movement.
Editor's Notes
- #2 Thanks for coming. I’m delighted to have an opportunity to introduce this project to you. The last time I presented on it was less than a month ago-- at the NEH Offices in Washington DC. I had two minutes. We all did.
- #3 Two minutes each to present our more than 36 projects from this latest funding cycle.
- #4 Apps that combine geomapping tools with digital historical interpretations or access to relevant archival materials.
- #5 Interactive role playing game like “Pox in the City” set in Edinburgh in 1802 right after the development of the smallpox vaccination, and Soul of a Place, set in New Deal Era America and featuring writers employed by WPA like Zora Neal Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, or Studs Turkel as they investigate America for American Guide Series.
- #6 Indeed, the tools presented alongside mine last month offer rich sampling of what the digital humanities makes possible for humanities scholars and teachers. Digital tools in the digital humanities often engage (or build) techno local advances for research in the humanities—Digital Tools, Digital Methodologies. Often tools for data mining and visualization.Of these, there were many. Remixing Rural Texas is one.
- #7 So . . . Lastmonth, I presented the project in two minutes. Today, because I have the luxury of time to elaborate, let me give you a project overview in half the time: ONE minute! Well, almost. More like a minute and a half.
- #8 <Shake it out. Stretch.>Ready with timer?
- #9 Hi. I’m Shannon Carter, and this is Remixing Rural Texas. A project that addresses a problem common in humanities scholarship reliant upon local archives: The problem is access, both physical and conceptual.
- #10 Our project includes two components, the first of which is illustrated above. Basically, a handful of 5-10 minute videos, remixed almost entirely from existing archival materials. Typically linear, however the remix itself may further complicate access, specially conceptual access to the source texts and their many-layered rhetorical and cultural contexts.
- #11 The second component of our prototype offers a response to this vexing question.An interactive prototype to make transparent the original source context and relevant information layers concerning the geographical and temporal elements so crucial to our everyday, local, texts and the lived experiences surrounding their creation and circulation. Upon playback, dynamic information layers linked to the timecode in the video remix will reveal the original context of associated source materials. A primary goal is to better enable responsible and transparent citation practices as a way of promoting sustainable and rigorous study of humanities content where place and time are crucial to the interpretation. We hope this first phase will lay the groundwork for more participatory elements enabled by RRT prototype.
- #13 Remixing Rural Texas: Local Texts, Global ContextsI’m Shannon Carter, Associate Professor of English at Texas A&M-Commerce, PI on this project, and a rhetorician who studies community engagement across local landscapes and over time, especially with respect to the texts that are generated and circulated to enact change—local, everyday, “ordinary.” In essence, Remixing Rural Texas offers an innovative approach to the problem of access to primary source materials that plagues researchers and archivists investigating rural, minority, and other historically underrepresented communities. Rural, geographically isolated communities are perhaps most vulnerable in this respect, especially when it comes to humanities scholarship investigating topics like race relations in local contexts.
- #14 Texts by and about underrepresented communities are, quite obviously underrepresented. Our university collection has worked to remedy that, and I build this project on those repositories and in hopes of enabling still further development of those archives via artifacts uncovered in our research. That’s what we’ve been up to these last few years and what we will continue, in part, via this visualization tool.
- #15 Wedraw extensively from remix culture, yet this is itself an innovation. Indeed,humanitiesscholars drawing from formal archives have yet to make much use of remix culture, and remix culture has yet to embrace the rich, interconnected and contextualized potential of the archives. That’s what we are trying to do here. That’s what we are attempting to enable here.
- #16 We are combining remix culture with the rigorous research and citation practices that are the bread and butter of the humanities.
- #17 Together with extensive use of rich local history collections, we are able reimagine the humanities to address a long-neglected area of humanities scholarship: rhetorical investigations of local, often ephemeral texts generated by and with understudied communities in underresourced areas of the country like rural Texas.
- #18 Let’s start with a few basic assumptions.
- #19 In fact, we might go so far as to argue, as KerbyFurguson and others have, that “Everything is a Remix.
- #20 Furgeson suggests that all creativity is remix, with the basic elements of creativity being CopyTransformCombine
- #21 In doing so, he remixes Eduardo Navas
- #22 And Malcolm Gladwell
- #23 And Grandmaster Flash
- #24 The internet and associated technologies didn’t invent remix culture, merely made it easier. The remix phenomena didn’t begin with music sampling, merely scared the recording industry.
- #25 We can’t forget William S. Burroughs,
- #26 Whose cut-up-technique was a remix of earlier movements like the Dada collages in the teens and twenties.
- #27 Yet it runs deeper still. More than a century before remix culture began its battle in the courts and news headlines over our shared culture, Ralph Waldo Emerson argued, essentially, Everything’s a Remix.
- #29 And by current copyright law, they are all copyright criminals.
- #30 All of them. All of us.
- #31 As writers and thinkers, we all sample. Share. Copy. Remake. Remix.
- #32 We always have, says Lawrence Lessig, Whose Free Culture (in 2004) and subsequent works work with the above refrain,
- #33 Which later developed into the “Remix Manifesto” for the incredibly popular film by self proclaimed “web activist” Brett Gaylor and mashup artist Girl Talk
- #34 We draw from remix culture, but the goals are different from the pushback that is so central to the remix artists and lawyers I’ve mentioned thus far.
- #35 We are producing and interpreting humanities content, and developing digital tools for the study and teaching of humanities content. That original context is a fundamental concern for us. Capturing something about that is what archivists do. Our project intends to harness that.
- #36 In this project, place matters. Time matters. The humans who generated the original content are part of the story, as are the places themselves. We are recontextualizing artifacts originally scattered across the region to tell a story that occurs in a particular place a particular moments in time. If the humanities are the stories, ideas, and language we use to make sense of our lives and the world we share, Remixing Rural Texas is most certainly rich in humanities content.
- #37 As are the local texts take center stage within the broader rhetorical and cultural contexts in which they are generated and circulated.
- #38 Local texts like the address by President James G. Gee announcing to all faculty and staff in 1964 that East Texas State would desegregate that fall, the last of two remaining public universities in the state to do so.
- #39 Local texts like the “Declaration of Rights” produced by the Afro-American Society of East Texas (ASSET) not long after integration and the very year after John Carlos left the ETSU Track Team to run for San Jose State and then at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, then on to history.
- #40 Local texts like the Norris Community Club charter, a collaboratively written document to officially establish this activist group, which was founded in 1973 by residents of Commerce’s historically segregated neighborhood in partnership with university students, to provide “a direct line of communication between city officials and local African American citizens” (Billy Reed, NCC President), and brought about significant change on behalf of the local citizens.
- #41 These local texts circulated largely amongst very local audiences and function within a wide network of texts and people that matter in our understanding of this particular humanities content.
- #42 To enable this research, our project bringstogether archival research with three traditions increasingly common in the digital humanities: aggregation, remixing, and geomapping tools. Each remix thus features information layers recontextualizing content across region and within a broader historical context of the civil rights movement.
- #43 That brings us to the second component of the project.
- #44 One that concerns the geographical, rhetorical, historical, and archival forces informing the texts and the narrative emerging from this research.
- #45 Time and place are significant factors in this analysis, and they are hard to pin down via current mechanisms for presenting humanities scholarship. That’s a key reason for this second component. As you’ll notice, the fields beneath the remix (#7, the map, and #6, timeline) foreground those temporal and geographical elements making up the rhetorical context under investigation here. Both are interactive and linked to the timestamp in video thus appearing at relevant moment’s in the film’s playback. Before describing how it will work for our project, however, let me show you another variation in action. For that, we we again turn to remix culture.
- #46 Not long before NEH Digital Humanities grant application was due, the wonderfully generous remix community yielded this beauty. On January 11, 2011.I’d long been searching for a way to present humanities scholarship through remix of archival materials. Typically linear, video presents scholars who make use of primary source materials with problem: where did the content come from? What about the interactive, contextualizing forces enabled through print like footnotes and in-text citations and how might new media more productively capture these rhetorical moves and better communicate information most important to scholars? Remember the concern for remix artists like this one is not future research but rather (a) pushback against those who challenge fair use and (b) ease of (re)use for future mashups by others. Not necessarily scholarship but typically parody, in this example a parody of the radio show Glenn Beck remixed with more than 50 Daffy Duck cartoons produced between 1930-1960. The video in demo above is the popular remix Right Wing Radio Duck by remix artist Jonathan McIntosh. McKintoshexplains his goals in creating the demo like this: “I have long been an advocate for remixers to transparently cite their sources as part of promoting open video, claiming our fair-use rights and as a way to make it easier for others to remix the same material in alternative ways.” We have too. I’ll play on the first minute to demonstrate technology, but I have offered url for his work on the handout and encourage you take a look. PLAY VID
- #47 Our own project is absolutely inspired by McIntosh’s demo of an HTML5 video utilizing the Popcorn.js framework, an open source tool that works to integrate web content into video. In the above prototype, what you see is our playback screen. The remix can be viewed without this tool, but the tool adds relevant, dynamic content to the experience. The “power of the remix,” explains von Baldeggin her Atlantic Monthly review of this demo last month, “is in recontextualizing content, which can be further amplified by letting the audience see the source material in its original context” (The Secretly Awesome Things About to Transform Web Video ,September 12, 2011). Our goal is humanities scholarship not parody, but the general principles are infinitely applicable. Like the demo, our video remix is linked to dynamic content, including interactive layers concerning original source context. The remix above concerns the integration speech cited earlier. (Field #1) Displays the current audio clip and location of that source material, in this case from a oral history recorded with former university president Gee in 1980; (Field #2) Displays the current video clip, in this case pulled from the archive.org to offer a rich overlay of racial integration in educational settings elsewhere at at the time, (Field #3) Displays the current image, in this case a photograph for promotional materials of James G. Gee in his office, pointing at Northeast Texas region on a map for a few years after he became university president (in 1947), a position he would hold for nearly 20 years, and more than a decade before the campus would integrate under decree by Board of Regents. The clipping from Dallas Morning News appeared in 1964 found its way into our remix via its placement amongst Gee’s Papers at A&M-Commerce, alongside similar news clippings and among artifacts further complicating his well-known status as a staunch segregationist. and exists in Gee’s Papers at Texas A&M-Commerce. All artifacts mentioned are available in the Northeast Texas Digital Collections and will link to same. (Field #4) Offers further context for relevant clip, including above but likely drawing from broader historical context of civil rights movement, including relevant Supreme Court Cases. (Field #5) Most artifacts included in remix are licensed through Creative Commons and thus encourage further remix and reuse. (Field #6) Timeline to reveal local event across broader historical context. (Field #7) Map to feature specific location under discussion. (Field #8) Footnote provides additional, relevant factual evidence and, especially, scholarly sources of note and contributing to analysis. All of the above fields link back to original source context and additional, relevant information.
- #48 Our remix is about the humanities. By way of example, let me suggest THIS is a remix—Richard Wrights 1941 photoessay 12 Million Black Voices
- #49 Though it isn’t recognized as a remix, I would argue that it most certainly is and in ways similar to those we are hoping to approach in our 21st century project.
- #50 12 Million Black Voices was published in 1941, a photoessay drawing from the immense archive of more than 65000 photographs commissioned by the federal government under the WPA, specifically the Farm Security Administration, which sent out photographers to record the lives of the people the FSA strove to assist. Place. The place, then, is America, attending to the collective awareness developing from the New Deal Era’s commitment to documenting America’s struggles and attempting to improve conditions for every American. That documentation included Federal One, of which the Federal Writers Project was a part, and the extensive collection of Slave Narratives upon which Richard Wright was most certainly drawing in his work. Artifacts for Wrights treatise were drawn from the FSA photographs.
- #51 With RRT, Place. The place is Northeast Texas, though as any local is increasingly interconnected across national and, indeed, global landscapes, the place we investigate is always situated in broader contexts. Artifacts will be drawn from other places, but whereever possible we will make any artifact used in creation of our remixes available in our university’s library collections and license through Creative Commons to encourage additional remixes to engage this and other locals in new ways. We will make use of oral histories, photographs, newspaper articles, archival footage, promotional materials, campus publications, community publications, and a vast array of unpublished materials that otherwise reveal important aspects of the local.
- #52 In creating this this remix, Wright was remixing the archives . . .
- #53 . . . . archives developed under very specific conditions. By way of explanation, I turn to yet another remix,
- #54 . . . the people responsible for the video game mentioned earlier, Soul of a Place, which is, essentially, an option for players to “remix” artifacts drawn together for yet another important remix, their acclaimed documentary Soul of a People, which was, essentially, a “remix” of David Taylor’s book of the same name, which is, of course, a “remix” of existing scholarship on the topic, including the important work by intellectual historian Jerrold Hirsch, for Portrait of AmericaI share a promo for this award-winning documentary.
- #55 Richard Wright was an important part of the Federal Writers Project and, later drawing from that work, would become one of the most important writers of the 20th century. His years in the Federal Writers Project saw the publication of his first novel and, less than two years later, his second, most famous and financially successful book Native Son, followed the very next year by his only obviously collaborative work, the subject of our discussion here.
- #56 The goal of 12 Million Black voices was, as Wright explains in book’s Preface, “. . . To . . . Depict . . . A complex movement of a debased feudal folk toward a twentieth century urbanization” (Wright).
- #57 With collaborator Edwin Rosskin, credited with “photo direction,” Richard Wright “remixed” the 65000 photographs emerging from the Farm Security Administration with an understanding of from personal experience, extensive research and gift for creative expression.
- #58 Consider this via Ferguson’s basic elements of a remix, from “Everything is a Remix”Together, they “copied” existing images, combining them with other experiences, research, knowledge derived from other artifacts, and other material realities to depict the 20th century’s “Great Migration” of America’s African American populations from the rural South northward to urban centers like Chicago and New York City, both cities where Wright himself would find (a) the Communist Party, then (b) sympathetic artists likewise drawn to social justice. In this combination, the elements are transformed into a new narrative.
- #59 From Wright’s preface... . (read from page 149)
- #60 Wright’s project came from the archives. Ours will as well.
- #61 Perhaps the most significant repository of primary source materials on Northeast Texas--more than 1,000 oral history recordings, 3,000 linear feet of manuscript materials, a book collection containing more than 17,000 titles, and a digital collection containing over 50,000 items and receiving more than 30,000 hits per month. Larger, better-resourced universities boast far more significant collections, of course, but I highlight the above figures to suggest significant potential in local, under resourced, understudied archives. After all, “The archive—all archive—every archive—is figured” (Burton 7).We build on the success of and in partnership with the HeirLoom Project, a state funded preservation project led by A&M-Commerce archivists, designed to digitize and bring together the artifacts previously scattered across region in church basements, genealogy collections at rural public libraries, private museums, and local historical associations.
- #62 Wrights photoessay offers what he calls “a folk history of the Negro in the United States,” focusing the collective experiences of “12 Million Black Voices” captured, enslaved, brought to work in the rural south, then “freed” with the Emancipation Proclamation, yet not yet free, then migrating to the North and urban centers in the first half of the 20th Century, especially after the World Wars. In 1970, the movement North began returning South. Our “remixes” attempt to capture something about the local and rural in those decades after Wright’s narrative—what happened next in this local context, among those who remained in the rural South and within local contexts and institutions influenced by those who live, work, and study here. Those whose lives are shaped by national legislation for civil rights and the the local levels at which such legislation is enacted.
- #63 Take this Global text as a case in point. East Texas State University recruited John Carlos from Harlem in 1966, just two years after this rural teachers college integrated and one year before Carlos would join Tommie Smith on the metal stand at the 1968 Olympics, raise a gloved fist in black unity and solidarity, and then to history.
- #65 Of his time spent at this Dallas area school, he’d later tell reporters, “Like most Harlem kids, I thought any place away from the ghetto would have to be beautiful. . . Texas was in the South but I was sure it was nothing like Mississippi or Alabama.”
- #66 As he’d explain to reporters many times over the next forty years, however, “About two minutes after I got there, my name changed from John Carlos to Boy.” Commerce, he continues, “was my first experience with southern, racial issues.”
- #69 Last month, more than forty three years after this rhetorical event took the global stage, John Carlos began a national book tour to launch his memoir The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment that Changed the World, with co-author David Zirin (sports writer for The Nation).
- #70 I was lucky enough to be in Washington DC the very week of his book signing there (October 1), where he draw a crowd so large a great many had to be turned away.
- #72 Though he spoke more about his life in Harlem, the months leading up that historic moment in Mexico City, and the difficult decades that followed than any time spent in Commerce, he dedicates an entire chapter to his time here entitled “Trouble in Texas” (59-76).
- #73 His time in Commerce, at our university, made a significant impact on him. As he explains in his memoir, “East Texas State was an unbelievably difficult, scaring experience, but it was also an education the likes of which changed my life forever” (74-75).
- #74 That night he told us the story of a talk he gave in Mississippi, not long after his other university San Jose State awarded him an honorary doctorate and installed a statue in his honor. He’s very proud of this honorary doctorate, insisting (with typical good humor) even family and friends call him Dr. Carlos.
- #75 A professor came to him afterward that Mississippi presentation, obviously irritated with the crowd’s decision to call him Dr. Carlos when, speaking of herself, people like “us” earned it the old fashioned way. “We worked for it.”
- #76 “Let me ask you something,” he told her. What did you have to do for that doctorate? Did you write a dissertation? Well, yes. Of course I did,” she tells him.
- #77 “You know who they write those dissertations about, don’t you?” he asks her.
- #78 They write them about people like me!
- #79 In the question and answer period, I was able to stand up and tell him/them. “I’m one of those PhDs who is researching you.”
- #80 And I work on the campus you feature in “Trouble in Texas.”
- #81 That though his poster likely hangs in dorm rooms across campus and have for decades, very few if any of our students know Carlos was ever here, let alone here the year before he took the global stage.
- #82 I thanked him for his memoir, which I can now share with these students.
- #83 Which we can now remix for projects like these.
- #84 The book sold out. The line for signing was long. As he signed my stack, including a copy I will donate to the university library, he told me he was just here in Commerce a few weeks ago. That they are trying to set up a Track meet in his name.
- #86 I said I’d heard something about a statue. He told he hadn’t heard anything about that, but if we wanted to set up an honorary doctorate for him, he’d be “down with that.
- #87 I went right back to my hotel room and learned what an honorary doctorate requires. Discovers I should request it of the president, which he then forwards to the appropriate committee. That happened October 2nd, and we eagerly await the response.
- #88 I’d like to close, then, by sharing a bit form the letter I sent that night in hopes of enlisting your support for the same and exploring together our local role in this broader context, as all such local contexts are interconnected. I do this with the greatest respect for my university and its founder and leaders over the last century.
- #90 Project goals thus emerge from and are informed by national, linked projects attending to the global dimensions of text use and production in everyday, local contexts. Established networks for final project and dissemination will aggressively explore potential linkages across national contexts and disciplines through the digital humanities. We see this project as enabling richer archival materials and remixes generated by both students and community concerning this region, but we are also excited about what may be possible when we consider such locally driven content and narratives in conversation with other, deeply local and related narratives. What can we learn when we bring these layers of information together in one space?
- #91 The audience for Remixing Rural Texas is threefold: (1) scholars in rhetoric and composition who are increasingly interested in rhetorical agency among historically marginalized groups and within everyday, local contexts. (2) college students (undergraduate and graduate) learning to conduct archival research and compose with new media, and (3) community members likewise invested in these local stories with national and even global implications. In framing these narratives surrounding race relations in this region and at a particular series of moments throughout the 20th century, the project provides researchers and others space to resist and extend interpretations and evidence. By mapping these events (both geographically and temporally), the project provides methods for visual analysis of race relations in comparison with other places, times, and artifacts. As a prototype for in-depth analysis of translocal phenomena ,the project might enable future researchers to race patters of the same across multiple sets of inquiry and data sets.
- #93 On the user end, the project would look something like this. What you see here is the beta version of Popcorn Maker, just released last month. It was quite by accident, really, that my long search for a solution to the limits of existing tools for presenting video remix as scholarship and via the web that I ran across this option in development right as we were putting together our application materials for NEH earlier this year. It is also an accident that the tool for enabling participation in the annotating video would appear the very month our grant began. But things move fast in developing digital tools. As a humanities scholar, all I can do is keep my eye out and keep collaborations in firmly in place. That’s my point. And perhaps the point of CLiC.