In this presentation, we will describe the process in which we developed a Digital Humanities website that would archive various documents and materials to tell Italian immigrants’ remarkable stories and their journeys to the Americas. These immigrants, their offspring, and their stories are shortchanged by a history that generally analyzes them as numbers and data that globalize the phenomenon but do not present individual narratives or how people lived around big historical events. The stories of these individuals are fundamental to understanding the immigration process as a whole, an undertaking that needs to be analyzed on a small scale, at the individual level. After coming to understand the mosaic that is nineteenth and twentieth centuries immigration, Professor Maria Teresa Sanhueza decided to create a public space to disseminate these stories and compare each piece of the immigration puzzle through the development of an academic website. The site combines historical, genealogical, and archival research with sociology, oral narratives, and social history.
"Using Technology to Build Connections"
