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Identification as Civic Literacy in Digital Museum Projects: A Case Study of the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum
- Community Literacy Journal
- Community Literacy Journal
- Volume 6, Issue 1, Fall 2011-2012
- pp. 23-37
- 10.1353/clj.2012.0012
- Article
- Additional Information
Scholars have observed that rhetorical identification is a common strategy used by both physical and virtual museums to engage the public in their narratives of civic history. This essay explores what happens when service-learning students enter this context to build digital projects as agents and as objects of identification. Drawing from my ten-year partnership with the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum, I illustrate how identification can arise within a museum-based digital project, how it can enrich and complicate the project, and how my students and I attempt to balance our insider/outsider roles as authors and interpreters of community history.