Project

Expanding a Necessary Space: Extending the Virtual Martin Luther King Project's Digital Scholarship, Pedagogy and Community Collaboration

Program

ACLS Digital Extension Grants

Department

Digital Humanities and New Media

Abstract

The Virtual Martin Luther King (vMLK) Project features an immersive recreation (an interactive digitally rendered experience) of Martin Luther King’s 1960 “A Creative Protest [Fill up the Jails]” speech, which engages individuals and groups in the hermeneutic act of experiencing and interpreting what was, what is, and what has never been in relation to public address and civic transformation. The project’s format and design is that of a transmedia project utilizing web tools, gaming and virtual reality platforms, and digitally rendered immersive audio recordings and visual models to engage the public in humanities content. While this content has been made available to students, citizens, and scholars through the official project website, and through immersive audio and visual experiences/exhibitions, the goal of this phase of the project is to extend the project to include collaborations with high schools, small liberal arts colleges, and other universities and museums.