This event will combine the traditional lecture and a live-recorded interview with the producers of the “Lost in the Stacks” podcast, as Souther reflects on his experience in modeling innovative platforms and processes for university-based community engagement through digital public history. He will show how a decade-long development initiative at an urban public university created Curatescape, a pioneering mobile app and cast a city (Cleveland, Ohio) as both a virtual museum and a learning laboratory for doing history in and with the public.

Souther will also discuss how Curatescape has helped build a sense of place in urban communities locally and, for the past four years, internationally through an extension of the project to adapt the platform and process in ways to facilitate their viability in the developing world.  With two grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Souther and his team have collaborated with partners in Kenya to engage the public in “curating” Kenya’s third-largest city, Kisumu. He will share the successes and challenges that came with this endeavor to build capacity for digital humanities practice across the digital divide.

J. Mark Souther is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Public History + Digital Humanities at Cleveland State University. A native of Georgia, Souther earned his Ph.D. from Tulane University. He is the author of New Orleans on Parade: Tourism and the Transformation of the Crescent City (2006) and Believing in Cleveland: Managing Decline in “The Best Location in the Nation” (2017).