O Say Can You See: Early Washington, D.C., Law & Family
O Say Can You See collects, digitizes, and makes accessible the freedom suits brought by enslaved families in the Circuit Court for the District of Columbia, Maryland state courts, and the Supreme Court. In making these documents accessible, the project invites users to explore the legal history of American slavery and the web of participants in the freedom suits, placing freedom seeking families in the foreground of our interpretive framework of slavery and national formation.
Petitioning for Freedom: Habeas Corpus in the American West
Petitioning for Freedom is a collaborative project drawing on habeas corpus petitions throughout the American West from 1812 to 1924 that consist of marginalized people's challenges to enslavement, child removal, domestic abuses, deportation, incarceration, and institutionalization, revealing a powerful history of legal mobilization among a diverse cast of petitioners.
Animating History
Animating History, a project of the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, combines the expertise of artists and filmmakers with the scholarship of historians and writers to produce unique and compelling historical dramatic documentaries and make them freely available for teaching, learning, and research. Films include the animated short Anna (2018), the feature-length The Bell Affair (2022), and the short film The Diary of Michael Shiner (2023).
