George Blake and David S. Busch have received Digital Scholarship Grants from the Freedman Center for Digital Scholarship at Kelvin Smith Library for the 2020-21 academic year. This newly created grant program targets scholars who are not eligible for the Freedman Fellows Faculty or Student programs—specifically, full- and part-time lecturers, instructors and postdoctoral scholars and fellows.
George Blake
Blake, a postdoctoral scholar in the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, will use ArcGIS digital mapping tools and digitized African American newspapers to trace the touring schedules of several musicians who performed at the Moondog Coronation Ball, a 1952 concert in Cleveland that is widely accepted as the first major rock and roll concert. His project plots geospatial data of venues in different cities in the days leading up to the concert, illuminating the context of African American neighborhoods supporting the musicians.
David S. Busch
Busch, a SAGES teaching fellow in the Department of History and a digital historian, will develop a social network map to visualize how Mahatma Gandhi’s ideas of nonviolence spread across national borders in the 20th century. The first iteration of the project will use digitized collections of Gandhi’s writings to identify the correspondence networks between Gandhi and activists within and beyond India.
Tentatively titled “The Gandhian Social Network,” the project will provide scholars with an accessible digital resource to collaborate and chart new ground in the political, intellectual and transnational history of Gandhian nonviolence. The long-term goal of the project is to develop relevant digital methodologies for other historians studying modern social protest and activism.
Get additional information
For additional information or specific questions regarding the Freedman Center for Digital Scholarship’s funding programs email Charlie Harper, digital scholarship specialist, at crh92@case.edu.
If you are interested in pursuing your own digital scholarship research and would like to know how the Freedman Center can help, email freedmancenter@case.edu.