The Department is requesting funds to purchase equipment to train graduate and
undergraduate students in documentary filmmaking and lay the foundation for creating
a digital history program. Today, museums, historic sites, preservation organizations,
and internet-based projects are using the narrative structure of documentary film and digital
history as a tool for creating stimulating interactive, archival, and immersion-based
experiences and programming. Approximately 100 graduate and 200 undergraduate
history majors will employ the equipment extensively in the department's public history,
museums, historic architecture, historic preservation, material culture, and oral history
classes, among many others. Projects will include historical inquiry, collecting and digitizing
visual materials, conducting oral history interviews, developing effective narratives, and
producing documentary films/videos of various lengths for public exhibition. Following the
successful models at George Mason University and the University of Virginia, this equipment
will facilitate a digital history program at MTSU that combines on-campus historic and
archival resources, such as the Gore Research Center, the Center for Popular Music, the
Center for Historic Preservation, with other disciplines, such as Georgraphy's Global
Information Systems (GIS), to develop extensive projects that are local, state, and national
in scope. In all, this program will better prepare students as communicators of historical
knowledge, both in the classroom and in public forums.
