ReSounding the Archives: Bringing Music into Learning

Abstract

The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM) in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS) and the College for Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA) at George Mason University, in partnership with colleagues at the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech, have secured a Mason 4-VA Collaborative Research Grant for the ReSounding the Archives project. ReSounding the Archives demonstrates the power of music and its importance throughout history, revitalizes a critical body of primary source material, engages students in multimedia and multisensory study of the past, and allows for deep engagement across disciplines.

Project Goals: 1) collaborate to research, record, and perform sheet music from World War I; 2) provide active research and preformance opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students across a range of disciplines in formal and informal settings; 3) design and build a website to make these resources publicly available. ReSounding the Archives will be the only existing website that offers high-quality, digitized, historical sheet music alongside professional recordings of each song that can be used in websites, documentaries, student projects, and exhibits, fulfilling this projectâs goal of bringing historical sheet music back to life and promoting future course use and student research.

This collaboration allows each institution to explore new ways to use music to integrate history content, music theory/appreciation, music performance, history education, and digital humanities in a variety of classroom and learning environments. Working with faculty and archivists, undergraduate and graduate students at all three institutions (Mason, UVA, and VT) will be engaged in a high impact, authentic learning experience resulting in a public facing project through a website and recorded performances.

Directly connecting to the theme, "learning in a digital world," this traditional presentation will provide an overview of the ReSounding the Archives website, practical uses for this resource, and best practices for interdisciplinary and multi-institution collaborations.