The Ongoing Rewards of Collaboration, Intermediality, and Multivocality in the Humanities: Reflections on the Multimedia Project Trug&Schein

This article showcases a collaborative multimedia digital humanities project, Trug&Schein, in order to reflect on the process of history writing. The coauthors draw on their experiences creating and producing a documentary play based on the correspondence between the two everyday Germans whose letters form the basis of Trug&Schein. Having co-created several kinds of materials in multiple media in support of the English and German versions of their play, the coauthors opened themselves to further collaborations with theater practitioners, citizen and academic scholars, and audiences at the stagings and at workshops. As various groups interacted with the diverse documents and artifacts that make up the project, the coauthors became increasingly aware of metanarrative analogies between their source materials and the texts, videos, and discussions they were creating. They found that collaboration, intermediality, and multivocality enabled them, and many of the other participants, to recognize the participatory character of historical work.