{"id":195502,"date":"2023-02-23T07:01:53","date_gmt":"2023-02-23T12:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=195502"},"modified":"2023-02-24T10:17:43","modified_gmt":"2023-02-24T15:17:43","slug":"epoch-shares-community-histories-from-connecticut-to-cote-divoire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2023\/02\/epoch-shares-community-histories-from-connecticut-to-cote-divoire\/","title":{"rendered":"EPOCH Shares Community Histories, From Connecticut to C\u00f4te d’Ivoire"},"content":{"rendered":"

Connecticut Humanities has <\/span>awarded<\/span> a <\/span>$<\/span>200,000<\/span> <\/span>P<\/span>artnership <\/span>G<\/span>rant<\/span><\/span><\/a> to associate professor of history and Africana studies Fiona Vernal <\/span>for the expansion of <\/span>a <\/span>public history <\/span>program<\/span> she pioneered in 2015.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Logo
Support has been provided to Vernal and EPOCH through a CT Cultural Fund Grant from CT Humanities (CTH), with funding provided by the Connecticut State Department of Economic and Community Development\/Connecticut Office of the Arts (COA) from the Connecticut State Legislature.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Vernal\u2019s program, \u201cAn Integrated Framework for Engaged, Public, Oral, and Community Histories\u201d (or <\/span>EPOCH<\/span><\/a>), encourages collaboration between UConn undergraduates, faculty, archivists, and community organizations to tell captivating stories that have taken place both across the globe and in Connecticut.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Past projects include an in-depth look at the exploitation of child labor in global chocolate production and an 80-year retrospective of housing discrimination struggles in Hartford. Now officially in partnership with <\/span>Connecticut Humanities<\/span><\/a>, EPOCH wil<\/span>l work with towns across the state \u2013 beginning with Bloomfield, Windsor, and Enfield \u2013 to collect their own community histories.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A lack of archived material has prevented many smaller cities and towns from understanding and celebrating their own histories, Vernal says. For example, census records may reflect an influx of migrants to a particular community at a particular time, but the numbers don\u2019t always translate to a sense of how these changes impacted individuals\u2019 lives. This is especially true for marginalized communities, who are even less likely to see their stories formally archived. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But oral histories \u2013 verbal testimonials and life stories from people who have lived through the time period in question \u2013 can fill this gap.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

EPOCH is based on \u201cthe notion that everyone\u2019s story is an artifact,\u201d Vernal says. \u201cEveryone can give their own testimonial about their own life and their own emotions and what brought them to a place. And the more inclusive stories we want to tell, oral histories will be the way we do that.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Caesar
Caesar Valentin ’20 (CLAS), attending the opening of the Housing Discrimination exhibition in 2019 (photo courtesy of Defining Studios).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An EPOCH Beginning<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the wake of the 2008 recession, Vernal\u2019s undergraduate students were facing a crisis of confidence, feeling the pressure to demonstrate measurable, hirable soft skills in their coursework.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This anxiety came to a head in Vernal\u2019s South African history course in 2015. Vernal had planned the course to follow a lecture-based format, similar to how she had taught it in years past. But at her students\u2019 prompting, she devised a new method of cooperative learning involving hands-on work in the archive and presenting historical research to the public. She didn’t realize it at the time, but she and her students had just originated the project that would become EPOCH.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey just asked if we could do something different,\u201d Vernal recalls of her students. She embraced the idea, spurred on by a belief that \u201cteaching is supposed to be dynamic and iterative; I\u2019m not supposed to be teaching the same class over and over again and nothing changes.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead of lecturing to her students, Vernal flipped her classroom, encouraging students to complete reading assignments at home and come to class ready to wade into the archive. She tasked them with listening to, annotating, and synthesizing the hundreds of oral histories compiled in the African National Congress (ANC) <\/span>Oral History Transcripts Collection<\/span><\/a> housed at the Dodd Center.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The oral history collection, <\/span>gifted<\/span><\/a> to UConn in 2007 by the ANC, represents a uniquely expansive panoply of life stories from activists and political leaders who comprised the ANC during its resistance to apartheid. Vernal\u2019s students leapt at the chance to produce some of the first public-facing scholarship based on the collection.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The class ultimately produced an exhibit that collated their findings from an in-depth analysis of the oral histories. \u201c<\/span>Children of the Soil: Generations of South Africans Under Apartheid<\/span><\/a>\u201d opened in April 2016 with a public keynote address and informative posters on display in the galleries of the Dodd Center.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cStudents invited their family members, and they were producing for a public audience. It was amazing,\u201d Vernal remembers. \u201cThey could meaningfully write about this for graduate school; they could talk about the experience of collaboration in a job interview. There were so many things that they could do, so many soft skills \u2014 collaboration, communication, critical thinking.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For another installment, students researched a story closer to home. One of the most recent EPOCH exhibits, centering on <\/span>housing rights struggles in Hartford<\/span><\/a> from 1940-2019, opened at the Hartford Public Library in October 2019.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Going Deeper<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While the series was interrupted by the pandemic, it is reemerging with support from Connecticut Humanities. Vernal hopes to facilitate oral history collection across the state, in addition to connecting communities with UConn\u2019s expertise and resources to prepare public-facing work, like a \u201ctraveling trunk\u201d of artifacts and a curricular element for educators to incorporate in K-12 classrooms.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The next year of EPOCH will be a busy one. <\/span>In addition to community projects documenting African American genealogies and collecting the history of Bloomfield, Vernal is building hartfordbound.com<\/a>, a digital humanities project that renders the history of Hartford through a series of 50 maps and 50 stories. James Kolb ’20 (CLAS) and former intern, is now the GIS Director and co-author on this project\u2014another example of how undergraduates can develop skills and networks that translate in the broader workforce.<\/p>\n

“It feels like running a startup,\u201d Vernal laughs, \u201cbut instead of <\/span>growth, growth, growth,<\/span><\/i> my version is <\/span>depth, depth, depth.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Vernal would like to acknowledge the contributions of current and former EPOCH interns and graduate assistants; Professor Clarissa Ceglio, who provided digital media and design support; Stephanie Orts ’16 (CLAS), who was EPOCH’s creative director for its signature housing, child labor, and immigration exhibits until 2019; and Nate Dillard, of LunarX, EPOCH’s current creative director. Seed funders include UConn’s Office of Global Affairs, the History Department, the Geography Department, and Greenhouse Studios, and CLAS, Office of the Dean. The leadership and vision of Mark Healey, head of the History Department, and support from staff and faculty within the UConn Human Rights Institute, Africana Studies Institute, and Department of History have laid an important framework for public scholarship that is innovative, rigorous, and deeply rooted in local communities and the university curriculum.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

About Connecticut Humanities<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

CT Humanities (CTH) is an independent, non-profit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. CTH connects people to the humanities through grants, partnerships, and collaborative programs. CTH projects, administration, and program development are supported by state and federal matching funds, community foundations, and gifts from private sources. Learn more by visiting cthumanities.org.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

About the Connecticut Office of the Arts<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Office of the Arts is the state agency charged with fostering the health of Connecticut’s creative economy. Part of the state’s Department of Economic and Community Development, the Office of the Arts is funded by the State of Connecticut and the National Endowment for the Arts.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now officially in partnership with Connecticut Humanities, EPOCH will be working with towns across the state \u2013 beginning with Bloomfield, Windsor, and Enfield \u2013 to collect their own community histories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":175,"featured_media":195506,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147,2226,1715,2318,2193,2312,2076,2235],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2413],"class_list":["post-195502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-clas","category-community-impact","category-dodd-impact","category-hartford-county","category-hri","category-research","category-today-homepage"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-04 14:44:32","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195502"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":195706,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195502\/revisions\/195706"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/195506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195502"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=195502"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=195502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}