The scientific community has been under increasing pressure from policymakers and the public to explain how research contributes to the public good. The community has emphasized two distinct approaches to explaining its operations and value. The first is the use of narratives that can make the work of science more accessible and engaging to nonscientists. The other is the use of new data mining and analysis methods to document quantitatively the complex paths by which research progresses and eventually contributes to a variety of societal goals. While both of these approaches have proved useful, the goal of this workshop is to explore ways that they might be combined into a hybrid approach that will be even more effective.
This workshop will assemble experts in the narrative and data-driven science communication approaches with leading science researchers to discuss how these various perspectives can be merged to define a template for a type of communication that encompasses the appeal of narrative, the rigor of new analytic data, and the understanding of how science works in practice.
This will be a dynamic digital wall that will allow visitors to interact with three-dimensional, high-resolution images of historic artifacts that mark transformative moments from the American medical past. These artifacts will respond to the user’s touch, turning, opening, and -- when activated -- enlarging to provide stories, exciting events and contexts, and digitized film and audio. Each of these objects will connect the viewer to additional objects and the stories they tell about how doctors, patients, innovators, philanthropists, and the wider community came together to make medicine modern in the United States. The interactive display will demonstrate how medical innovations forever altered the American experience of health and medicine.
Implementation of “Jews, Health, and Healing,” a major exhibit with related publications, programs, website, and outreach. For centuries, Jews have considered medicine a calling -- an occupation of learning and good deeds, vital to all communities and worthy of high respect. At the same time, Jewish bodies and behaviors have been the subject of medical scrutiny and debate. Some experts diagnosed the entire community as diseased, while others held it up as a model of health. The exhibit will examine how medicine has shaped the way Jews are seen, and see themselves. Building on recent developments in the medical humanities, “Jews, Health, and Healing” is the first exhibit to use the social and cultural history of medicine as a window into the Jewish experience in America. The exhibit will show how medicine has been, by turns, a vehicle for marginalization, acculturation, and the strengthening of Jewish identity.
The “Impressions from a Lost World” website and related public programs will tell the story of the 19th century discovery of dinosaur tracks along the Connecticut River Valley in Massachusetts and Connecticut. The significance of these fossils extended far beyond the emerging scientific community, as they exerted a profound effect upon American arts, religion, and culture that reverberates down to the present day. The website will use stories of real people to engage visitors to think about relationships between science and religion, amateur vs. professional scientific pursuits and the role of specialization, participation of women in science, and the impact of new scientific ideas on American culture. Website visitors will draw connections of these important humanities themes to current issues. Accompanying public programs will attract diverse audiences and build interest in the website.
This will be a unique video game based on the writings the American author Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond. Designed and directed by game designer Tracy Fullerton, Walden, a game, will simulate the experiment in living made by Thoreau at Walden Pond in 1845-47, allowing players to walk in his virtual footsteps, attend to the tasks of living a self-reliant existence, discover in the beauty of a virtual landscape the ideas and writings of this unique philosopher, and cultivate through the game play their own thoughts and responses to the concepts discovered there. The humanities content of the game will focus on an interactive translation of Thoreau’s writings and will also include references to the historical context of those writings. The game takes place in the environment of 1845 New England, when new technologies such as the railroad, the telegraph were first being seen and were part of the changes to pace of life that Thoreau so articulately resisted in critiques of society.
The project is the development of a working prototype that demonstrates the humanities ideas, technology, and public outreach for Pox in the City, a Unity 3D strategy game. Pox in the City draws upon a core interpretive framework for medical history, namely that beliefs, practices, and treatment are shaped by the interaction of the healer, the patient, and the disease entity. Players take on the role of a physician who has arrived in Philadelphia just as a smallpox outbreak erupts. Armed only with Edward Jenner’s new vaccination technique, players undertake the challenge of preventing the spread of the disease by persuading patients to be vaccinated. The interactive format will immerse players in the city’s rich history, as they experience the choices made by historical actors and constrained by scientific knowledge and cultural values.
The exploratory phase of a project to bring a new humanities initiative at the John Carter Brown Library to a much broader public than has traditionally been the case for the Library’s exhibitions and scholarly projects. “Exploring the Four Elements: Toward a Digital Environmental History of the Americas” takes a simple concept -- the cultural significance of earth, air, fire, and water to the diverse populations of the Americas, from the continent’s earliest indigenous inhabitants to the last waves of European scientific explorers at the end of the colonial period -- and examines the ramifications of human engagement with these elements as a window onto changing ecological relationships throughout the pre-contact and early modern periods in the early Americas.
The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History will enhance its staff capacity and train current educational staff in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education delivery, both of which will increase its ability to deliver interpretive tours and programming around the newly opened permanent exhibition, “Inspiring Minds: African Americans in Science and Technology.” The project will include hiring a full-time STEM educator to work with education and archival staff to create and implement a family learning approach to the sciences in the rich context of African American history and culture. A training facilitator will develop a cohort of STEM interns and train current staff educators to present STEM learning experiences. At the conclusion of the project, the museum will have increased staff capacity and widespread expansion and integration of STEM opportunities for the youth, families, and schools of Detroit.
The Amistad Research Center will hire a project archivist to process 15 archival collections highlighting the accomplishments of African Americans in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) professions. An inventory of the collections will be created and selected materials emphasizing multigenerational African American achievement in STEM professions will be digitized to improve public access. Highlights of the collection will be shared through social media and Amistad’s blog. The project supports the Amistad Research Center’s role as a repository of collections documenting African Americans in STEM professions while providing an emerging archivist valuable experience in the evaluation, organization, preservation, and description of complex archival collections.
The Mütter Museum will develop a new interactive online exhibit that explores the important role of medicine in American history through its unique collections. In keeping with the museum's broader medical humanities focus, the online exhibit will be presented thematically in a life cycle sequence. Representative objects will include obstetrical forceps, an iron lung, a surgical kit, William Harvey's book on blood circulation De Motu Cordis, eyeglasses, a tooth extractor, and an embalming kit. The museum will also develop a curriculum that addresses national secondary school education standards in history, science, and health by utilizing narrative stories, specimens, models, medical tools, photographs, and texts from collections. Exploring historic events and their health and medical underpinnings through an interesting narrative lens will engage audiences in critical STEM topics by connecting personal stories to the objects actually used to understand disease and heal people.
The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) will plan, implement, and evaluate educational programming for its upcoming garden-wide exhibition, "Frida Kahlo's Garden." The programming and interpretation will create an immersive, compelling, interdisciplinary learning experience that merges arts, humanities, and science themes. Programming will celebrate Mexican culture, immersing visitors in the music, dance, food, and fashion that influenced Kahlo and continues to inspire people today. Through the exhibit and programming, visitors will gain insight into the impact of Kahlo's interest in the natural world on her artwork; understand the continuing impact of Mexican nature, nationalism, and intellectual history on arts and culture; and make personal connections between art, nature, and their own lives. The project will also provide a model for other botanical gardens to use to create interdisciplinary exhibitions.
Wagner Free Institute of Science will develop, prototype, and produce new interpretive tools to enhance visitor learning experiences and deepen visitor engagement with the museum's rich history, unique collections, and Victorian-era exhibit gallery of natural history specimens. Interpretive tools will include a site guide; a map of the natural history installation, which will contextualize the exhibit and provide a bridge to contemporary science; specimen stories to drill deeper into the collection; and interpretation-infused admission protocols. In creating these approaches, the Wagner will directly involve college students and young adult visitors through an iterative process of prototype testing and refinement. The initiative will result in new ways for visitors to experience the museum; make connections between science and history; and foster learning through self-directed discovery.