“NC Eats” (https://nceats.omeka.chass.ncsu.edu/) is a digital humanities project authored by the Department of History at the North Carolina State University. Self-described as “an online resource for the history of food and eating in North Carolina,” this self-guided digital exhibit of historical photographs accompanied by thematic captions and prompts for discussion is designed for students “to explore primary and secondary sources related to the revolution in eating that occurred in the United States and North Carolina between the 1910s and 1960s.” The project is digitally housed on an Omeka-powered platform.

NC Eats Is Food for Thought

“NC Eats” states it is intended for students of all levels. However, its subpages with tips and activities for teachers suggest a focus on secondary school classrooms. The explanatory language used to describe historical methodology and definitions further pinpoints this as a resource to engage secondary school-aged students, particularly at the upper middle-school level through lower high school level. By using the medium of food and culture to teach about historical methodology and social science, this digital humanities project site can accommodate engagement with a broader segment of learners because it focuses on something users engage with any given day and the suggested classroom activities are based on broad topics connected to the primary source material that can be scaled up or down in learning complexity level depending on how the teacher uses it.

Who is in Charge?

This project was created by the North Carolina State University Department of History, which describes its educational philosophy through the department’s motto, “Know the past. Prepare for the future.” Its undergraduate history degree advertises a “Teacher Educational Concentration,” which further supports its emphasis on supporting ongoing education and pedagogy efforts locally. Therefore, this project shows that the larger intent is to teach secondary students how to examine and critically analyze history and connect it to practical applications such as health and civics. Further, North Carolina State University is one of two land-grant institutions in the state, meaning that it has its origins under the federal legislation known as the Smith-Lever Act of 1914. The North Carolina State Extensions education system, an inherent part of the university’s Smith-Lever Act origins, obligates the university to carry out a common mission to extend knowledge to the public “in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA-NIFA), as well as state and local governments. This strategic partnership is called N.C. Cooperative Extension.” The higher goal is to “enrich the lives, land, and economy of North Carolinians.” This background, which is not immediately apparent in how the project describes itself up front matters because it highlights the importance of the project’s intent even if the technology it employs appears closer to a static web 1.0 style site. As Claire Ross reminds us in her digital humanities scholarship: “Social media should not focus on the technology, but the activity that is undertaken.”

Given “NC Eats” is a project under the aegis of a government-funded university, its funding and further development is tied to government cycles and budgets. The site pointedly has minimal information about when it was established or if it is still actively continuing. Broken links in key areas disrupt full functionality of the project site. Further online searches for “NC Eats” brings up more active variations of similar subject matter on more social media dynamic pages also affiliated with North Carolina State Extensions, I suspect “NC Eats” is now an historical digital artifact itself rather than a digitally active project. And, more up-to-date North Carolina State Extension projects that returned in the search also note the impact of COVID-19 in creating food insecurity for many North Carolinians, suggesting resources that may have gone into the original “NC Eats” project may have suddenly ceased.

Is that what I ordered? It sounded so much better on the menu…

“NC Eats,” with its intent to be a teaching tool for public school settings made by another public school fits well into the discipline of the digital humanities in its focus first on a social undertaking and using dynamic technology to achieve that goal as remarked upon by Matthew Kirschenbaum in his scholarship. In using the superficially innocuous medium of food and culture while teaching history, the site actual addresses dana boyd’s concern about the lack of neutrality in data analysis head-on by actively using primary source material photographs to critically analyze drivers of food choices among different demographics in North Carolina, prompting a subtle discussion on inequality and race. While the project seems to be somewhat incomplete based on broken links and a limited offering of only three exhibitions in its museum section, it draws attention the difficulty in classifications because it organizes some parts of its exhibit by themes, but those categories may need to be subclassified further for the projects ease of navigation and exploration by the user. One of the areas the project seemed to be most excited about but does not show much evidence of are the online exhibits in “The Classroom” feature that would allow students to use the primary source materials offered on “NC Eats” turned into variations of curated exhibits by students to demonstrate their efforts at critical thinking and historical interpretation. In Claire Ross’s digital humanities scholarship, the topic of “planned obsolescence” is covered with great thought, but reviewing “NC Eats” suggests the more pressing issue is what should happen when de facto obsolescence (more often the norm) occurs. Is there a digital landfill that is overflowing that can cause further problems down the road in the world of digital humanities? Based on what the “NC Eats” site show, it had a great purpose in how it tied together different materials and activities to support educators and their pupil and neatly displayed primary source materials to pique local interest on how the state has changed but it may not have established enough stakeholder buy-in at the beginning, meaning we are left with an attractive, if somewhat static, website of resources that needed to think more about its end-user’s motivations and experience (that social network Kirschenbaum emphasized) before it began applying a technological solution that may have over-structured the “NC Eats” experience, inhibiting its growth.

Works Cited:

boyd, danah. 2016. “Data, Algorithms, Fairness, Accountability” U.S Department of Commerce, Data Advisory Council. Washington, DC, October 28.

Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, “What Is Digital Humanities and What’s It Doing in English Departments?” ADE Bulletin, No. 150, 2010.

Ross, Claire. “Social Media for Digital Humanities and Development” In Digital Humanities in Practice Claire Warwick et al., p. 24-25 Facet Publishing, 2012.