Women in History: The New Historia Offers Innovative Ways to Navigate History
From The New School:
Imagine brushing shoulders with history’s most influential women — women whose stories were never included in textbooks and encyclopedias. The New Historia, a new digital archive of female history created by Dr. Gina Luria Walker, professor of women’s studies at The New School, is changing the way we look at the past and, ultimately, the way we’ll navigate it.
The New Historia is designed to document and promote the achievements of women in history — from poets to scientists, philosophers to soldiers — that have gone unnoticed and unrecognized by society. Inspired by Mary Hays’ collection Female Biography (first published in 1803 and updated in 2013), The New Historia aims to create a knowledge-ordering system that builds on a new wave of historical research, using innovative technologies for representation and delivery.
Jamer Hunt, The New School’s vice provost for Transdisciplinary Design, and Lisa Strausfeld, a senior research fellow with Parsons School of Design and principal of the design studio Informationart, have recently partnered with The New Historia to bring the stories of women from the past to life. Using the scholars’ research, Strausfeld created an immersive three-dimensional timeline as a way to explore the histories of these women. Although still in its early stages, Strausfeld’s VR graph shows how the lives and relationships of historical women changed over time in a way two-dimensional graphs cannot. The graph shows the course of each woman’s life as it stretches through the decades. Users can explore the women’s work, publications, and relationships while moving backward and forward in space and time. Strausfeld calls the program a “Google Earth for Knowledge” — a never-before-seen way to experience history.
Learn More, Read the Complete Announcement
Direct to The New Historia
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About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.