Leading the Way in Digital Humanities

Lehigh University’s College of Arts and Sciences will integrate emerging digital media with community engagement thanks to an $800,000, three-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The grant supports the work of Lehigh’s new Mellon Digital Humanities Initiative, whose work will focus on engaging undergraduates with the local community using new digital media. Like other American cities, Bethlehem confronts issues of immigration, education, religion, economic hardship and revitalization, and the Mellon grant supports chronicling the common issues of social justice and a city’s evolving history.

“This grant from the Mellon Foundation is the culmination of years of hard work by Lehigh faculty, staff and students from departments and interdisciplinary programs across the College of Arts and Sciences,” says Edward Whitley, associate professor of English and the project’s director. “Thanks to the generosity of the Mellon Foundation, undergraduate students at Lehigh will have more opportunities than ever before to work closely with faculty and visiting scholars on research projects that will not only benefit the local community, but that will also give students hands-on experience with cutting-edge digital media.”

Faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences have been telling Bethlehem’s story using digital media to address issues of social justice and the city’s evolving history. The Mellon Digital Humanities Initiative expands efforts, often in close collaboration with Lehigh’s surrounding neighbors, to bridge scholarship and community engagement. Digital media workshops and a lecture series will bring outside experts to campus to work with faculty and students, training in the latest techniques and best practices. Postdoctoral fellows will offer digital humanities courses.

The grant also offers faculty and staff training workshops and work on an ongoing digital humanities project for each of the three years. Course development grants will allow faculty to expand a humanities curriculum that engages the community. Lehigh/community partner grants will seed or kick-start collaboration between community organizations and Lehigh faculty and students. Undergraduate research grants will integrate digital media into undergraduate work by facilitating independent projects outside the classroom.

“We want to understand Bethlehem as a post-industrial city, as a city with a long past trying to reinvent itself,” says Whitley. “We’ve been doing this kind of work for some time across various parts of campus, and this is an acknowledgement from Mellon as we keep moving forward.”

The College of Arts and Sciences has a tradition of incorporating community interaction and emerging digital media into curricula. Students in the department of history increasingly study the past and focus on Bethlehem using digital media. A new graduate-level certificate in documentary film is offered through the American Studies program, while both the South Side Initiative and the Center for Community Engagement bring Lehigh together with the community to share knowledge, foster democracy and improve the quality of life on Bethlehem’s south side. Other educational opportunities exist in area studies that focus on the Asian, Latino and Africana experience within communities.

Story by Robert Nichols