“Harvard from Home” is a collection of stories from members of the Harvard community during the COVID-19 pandemic, when students, staff, and instructors have all been sent off campus. While the community is scattered geographically and together virtually, members of the community have each experienced this extraordinary event in their own ways and in their own spaces. By collecting, sharing, and preserving these stories, this project hopes to create a place to begin to weave the individual voices into a community experience and shared memory.
“Harvard from Home” was created by a class I taught, HISTSCI191, “Harvard’s Changing Landscape,” which was an oral history project-based course, in conjunction with the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments (CHSI). The class initially planned to conduct an oral history of Havard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences on the eve of their move to a new campus, but the momentous transformation of the University in March 2020 suggested that an even more dramatic change was taking place on campus. We shifted the focus of the class to collecting and preserving how Harvard community members are experiencing COVID-19 through the unprecedented decision to depopulate the campus in the name of public health.
The HISTSCI191 course was Emma Broder, Borey Chea, Lily Gulledge, Alessio Fikre, Michelle Walsh, and Dave Unger (Instructor), with technical help from Maureen Ton (CHSI), Clayton Scoble (Lamont Library), and Jeremy Guillette (FAS Instructional Technology).
Learn more at harvardfromhome.omeka.fas.harvard.edu.
