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FOREWORD

EDWARD L. AYERS

Recipient of the National Humanities Medal for “Making Our History Accessible in New Ways”

University of Richmond

AN EMBARRASSING VIDEO RECENTLY TURNED up: a 1995 promotional piece from the University of Virginia about the promise for the humanities of the then-new World Wide Web. It seems a virtual parody now, with the words “information superhighway” accompanied by an image of an actual highway. Students are clearly uncomfortable with the mouse and navigating a screen. One scene on the cutting-room floor showed a student running the mouse over the screen of the huge beige monitor hulking before her, not an illogical assumption at the time.

Despite the cruel documentation of the passage of time, the video attests to an early and enduring faith that those of us who teach about the past will find ways to take advantage of the opportunities of the present. In the quarter century since that video was shot, teachers and scholars have continued to experiment, to find new ways to connect students with the record of the human experience.

The essays in this book attest to that spirit of imagination and engagement. They chronicle a range of experiments to see how we might best use the powerful new means suddenly available to us, outpacing even the rhetoric of the early days of the web. This book, and the projects that underlie it, speaks to the commitment of dedicated scholars and teachers to make the most of our own moment in time, to share with the students the excitement of learning in new ways. It is a heartening and inspiring book.