MURFREESBORO — History
students at MTSU are making history themselves by creating a website that will
enable tourists to discover Midstate history on their own.
Fifteen scholars in the fall 2017 “Doing Digital History”
course taught by assistant professor Molly Taylor-Poleskey performed archival research
to create a walking tour of downtown Nashville.
“My intention is to have an iteration of this course every
year in the fall,” said Taylor-Poleskey. “It’s an upper division undergraduate
course, and every course will focus on a different neighborhood of Nashville.”
Each student concentrated on a subsection of the
neighborhood. They tested their work by walking their tours themselves on Dec.
6 and 11.
Features of the walking tour include the Life and Casualty
Tower, the Ryman Auditorium, Fort Nashborough, Union Station, the Ernest Tubb
Record Shop and the former location of Pearl School, which opened its doors to local
African-Americans on what is now Fifth Avenue South in 1883.
Another stop along the way was the Hermitage Hotel, which
was restored to its original 1910 splendor in the mid-1990s. The most popular
historical feature of the hotel is the first-floor men’s bathroom, where the
walls, toilets and urinals were made with green marble. A plaque outside the
door notes that numerous legislative deals were made there.
“The men’s bathroom was voted ‘Best Bathroom of America’ by
Cinta Bathroom Supply Kings,” said Amy Inthavong, a senior advertising major
from Murfreesboro, who investigated the hotel’s legacy.
Bobby Cooley, a senior history major from Manchester,
Tennessee, discussed an Aug. 5, 1911, publicity event to promote a car at the
Tennessee Capitol.
“The salesman decided to do a demonstration of how well the
new Ford Model T ran, and so, created a stunt to drive up the steps of the
state Capitol, turn around (in) the inside of the building and drive it back
down the steps,” said Cooley.
H.W. Major, the driver, had to drive the car up the steps in
reverse gear because the gas line was gravity-fed, Cooley explained.
The history tour website, which is intended to be permanent
and constantly updated, is not the only digital aspect of the class. Students digitally
aligned satellite and aerial maps of areas with historic maps of those same
areas and compared change over time in them as layers on Google Earth.
They also recorded soundscapes and produced mini-podcasts
about their sites to familiarize themselves with their subneighborhoods.
Taylor-Poleskey said she taught the class in a way that emphasized adapting to constantly
changing hardware and software.
“Instead of teaching how to use individual programs, which
are going to be outdated in no time, I’m trying to teach them about plasticity
and problem-solving when they are confronted with new technologies,” Taylor-Poleskey
said.
The walking tour website is freely accessible at https://bygone-nashville.mtsu.edu/.
Updates and class photos can be found by visiting the digital history website http://www.mtsu.edu/history/digital-history.php.
Listen to a radio interview about the tour at http://mtsunews.com/taylor-poleskey-digital-history-nov2017/.
For more information, contact Taylor-Poleskey at molly.taylor-poleskey@mtsu.edu.
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