Lecture-Week4-PartIII

8/7/2019 Lecture-Week4-PartIII

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/lecture-week4-partiii 1/4

Part I, Introducing Week Four Shannon Carter, PhD Spring 2011

/HFWXUH:HHN)RXU,QWURGXFWLRQ

A. What makes for a good video essay?

A Class Apart had all the elements one looks for in a documentary: the narrative is

compelling, the story told significant, and the larger themes present, obvious, and

significant throughout. Not only does the documentary recount a significant momentin history, but it provides broader social commentary about this issue and its impact.

The information provided is relevant, and the evidence for key arguments is offered

through careful archival research and field research methods including interviewswith key players.

The budget, time, and size (and collective expertise) of crew committed to A Class

Apart also far, far exceeds what will be available to you on your project.

From your assignment sheet for DMP #1:

Project should be accessible, rhetorically effective, and accurate. Ideally, it will also

be driven by good design and the elements that shape a good narrative: suspense,

involvement of viewers in story, extensive use of specific details rather than broad

generalizations, and careful attention to the various ways all the elements of thenarrative fit together. . . . Ideally, the project will go beyond a mere recounting of

events to provide some broader social/cultural or critical commentary about this

region and life within it.

Certainly A Class Apart meets the above goals. Notice the recurring use of the

qualifier ídeally,µ though. I chose that term carefully. Also understand that highproduction value is far from necessary. Your goal for DMP1 is to blend rigorous

archival research methods and the possibilities available through digital tools to




create a video essay that contributes to our conversation about life in Northeast

Texas. Your goal is to play. Explore. Create. Research. Play some more.

Remember this from the assignment sheet as well.

For the DMP1, however, the journey itself is more important then the end result.

Greater attention to the end product will come later.

The grade for DMP#1 will be largely determined by your ability to submit acomplete project that includes the following elements and submit the project on or

before the stated deadline.

You·ll find the deadlines in the assignment sheet for DMP1 and additional details at

the Assignment tab for Week Four.

The rubric I will use to evaluate your DMP1 can be found at the Assignment tab for

Week Four as well. Take a look at that now, and keep it handy as we make our waytoward the submission deadline.

B. Deep Ellum, ´Harlem in Miniatureµ

"Blues in the Dallas school is about Dallas," emphasizes Paul Oliver. "Infact, no other blues school, with the exception, perhaps, of Chicago, gives us

quite such a picture of the urban life which inspired it."4 From the WPA

Guide to Dallas onwards, which treated Deep Ellum as "Harlem in

Miniature," "Deep Elem Blues" has served as the emblematic song of the

blues experience in Dallas. (Polk, ³Deep Ellum Blues´

The Federal Writers· Project produced a WP A Guide to Dallas , and you can find

entries for many area towns in the WP A Guide to Texas and other contributions to the

American Guide Series.

Drawing from the Northeast Texas Digital Collections enables similar comparisons

that further enrich your project·s significance. So, too, do your references to other,

scholarly works (including our required course readings) and other relevant primary

source materials.

In ´Deep Ellum Bluesµ (Southern Spaces , 2007), Kevin Paskdraws extensively from a

blending of source materials (1) his own personal experiences, (2) primary sourcematerials like images collected at the Dallas Public Library (see above), and (3)

secondary source materials. The video by the same name draws from (1) primary




source materials (recall the images that overlay audio from original interviews) and

(2) the interviews themselves. In addition to these two sources, the researchersinvolved with the video ´Deep Ellum Bluesµ most certainly drew from a variety of

sources not available to us (another reason why I want you to be sure to offer careful

citations for your own work so others can benefit from it).

What can we learn from ´Deep Ellum Bluesµ (the video, created in 1985) and ´Deep

Ellum Bluesµ (the article, created by someone else and published in 2007)? What

insight can we glean from these readings and make use of in our own Digital MediaProjects?

In ´Deep Ellum Bluesµ (Southern Spaces , 2007), Kevin Paskrecounts his experiences

growing up in Dallas in ways that tie that narrative to two important themes:gentrification in two key areas of Dallas (see essay) and the invisibility of same. The

theme of ínvisible historyµ seems an especially appropriate one for many of you to

take up in your own video essays, as it shows up regularly in our readings and inyour discussion posts in response to those readings and contents of the Northeast

Texas Digital Collections.

Pask weaves his personal experiences with area though out his heavily researched

tale Dallas history, especially as it pertains to the music scene in Deep Ellum. In

doing so, he deftly foregrounds the complex racial dimensions in the same andechoes the tensions of Wright·s treatise on the Great Migration in 12 Million Black Voices :

the "roots" music of the early twentieth century is about movement rather thanrural stability; the railroad, not the farm, is the leitmotif of blues and country and

western.

A railroad anchored Deep Ellum in those early days, as we learn from the video withthe same title (´Deep Ellum Blues,µ Folkways). The video was produced in 1985 by

the Dallas Museum of Art, and by itself offers a useful model for us and our work.

Again, the video is not about Deep Ellum in any general way, nor is it about Deep

Ellum in ways that separate it from the broader social/cultural themes that I haveasked you to explore in your own video essays. It is both very local in its content and

very global in its commentary. That matters. It is a video about music, but also race

relations and change. As Polk describes the music depicted in Deep Ellum, the video

is likewise about ´movement rather than . . . stability.µ

It is about change. In the video, change hastened by the loss of the railroad and other factors. In the article, change hastened by growing populations and other complexthemes. Change is also a theme you could quite easily and purposefully foreground

in most any video essay about Northeast Texas.

Multimodality enables us to foreground concepts like ćhangeµ in ways that may beuniquely effective and persuasive.




Consider the impact of this detail, paired with an image of life shoved aside to make

way for Interstate 75 (Central Expressway), a road that has been a major part of myown life for many years with a history I knew nothing about until very recently.

Figure 1: View of Stringtown before the construction of Central Expressway, 1947, courtesy of the DallasPublic Library.

Central Expressway will do more than relieve traffic congestion," proclaimed The Dallas

T imes Herald in its lead editorial on opening day for the expressway, August 18, 1949.

"It will put new life into many blocks of blighted property that was adjacent to therailway tracks. It is this kind of public improvement that promotes city growth." Growth

northward. This was the era that fixed the division between South and North Dallas asone between white and black, poor and rich. As was generally the case with such

developments all across America, the expressway took the path of least resistance:railroad land and the neighborhoods of poor people, which often went together. One

observer wrote of a similar process in St. Paul, Minnesota, in the 1960s, "Very few blackslived in Minnesota, but the road builders found them."6 Central severed Deep Ellum from

downtown and plowed through Stringtown, which was the black neighborhood that hadonce strung together, along a narrow corridor, the North Dallas Freedmantown and Deep

Ellum. The expressway also paved over about an acre of the historic Freedman'scemetery in the area, using broken tombstones as roadfill (a practice that was common

enough in the period, and not limited to black cemeteries). (Pask, ³Deep Ellum Blues´)

Lecture-Week4-PartIII

Documents