Seeking Untold Stories, Discovering the Remarkable

Using tools and perspectives from Communication and Public Anthropology, Nina Shapiro-Perl's new course, Unseen and Unheard: Documentary Storytelling in the Other Washington, provides a cross-disciplinary learning experience for students of both disciplines.

Working in teams, students produce projects with six non-profit organizations in the Washington area. The organizations partnering with the class for the fall 2008 semester include Brainfood, Alexandria Seaport Foundation, and Sitar Arts Center, along with the Seafarers' Yacht Club, IMPACT Silver Spring, and the Barry Farms Community Coalition.

An essential aspect of the course is that students learn to truly understand the groups and their missions before real production begins. Students meet with both non-profits' directors and staff and the people served by them. In some cases, students help people 'find' their own stories and tell them through different forms of digital media.

Final projects document the lives of the people of Washington – all too often unseen and unheard – using videos, digital stories, photo essays, oral histories, etc. These storytelling projects will become part of a digital archive accessible to the AU community and the public. Issues addressed include: health and illness, labor, the environment, affordable housing, education, hunger and nutrition, and sexuality and youth.

Student filmmaker Sarah Farhat shoots at Brainfood

These films are work of teams of American University Anthropology and Film students from the course.  Students documented the stories of at-risk youth who immerse themselves in the arts; of struggling immigrants who find their voice as community leaders; of "last-chance" teenagers who build boats and launch new lives; of elderly fishermen, who treasure their time on the river and reflect on a segregated past. And more.

 By the semester's end, AU students created professional-quality videos and digital stories that these organizations can use in their communications, outreach and fundraising. In the process, students got real-world experience in documentary production. And their work becomes part of a public, digital archive at AU of unseen, unheard Washington.

They are young people from Barry Farms speaking their mind about plans to re-develop their neighborhood. They are students at the Alexandria Seaport Foundation learning how to build boats and graduating with skills that go beyond carpentry. They are community leaders finding their voices and changing their neighborhoods through IMPACT Silver Spring. They are young artists and musicians learning from professionals at the Sitar Arts Center in Mt. Pleasant. They are fishermen of the Seafarers Yacht Club, drawing pleasure and serving the community from their perch on the Anacostia River that they've held for sixty years. They are students from Brainfood who cook something, learn something, eat something and clean up! with every class.