Home » Newpages Blog » Call for Contributions :: The Virtual Education Project

Call for Contributions :: The Virtual Education Project

From The Virtual Education Project: One of the most effective ways of learning is to immerse ourselves in the cultures we study; yet, we often encounter problems when these cultures are separated from us by constraints such as geography or time. When studying various people, places, events, and works, students and teachers rarely have the resources to visit each (if any) historical landmarks pertaining to their subject matter, restricting both research and teaching to textbooks and/or an amalgam of materials from various resources. The Virtual Education Project (VEP) is a large-scale pedagogical undertaking directed at providing both students and teachers with visual introductions to historical and contemporary landmarks (worldwide) relevant to the study of the humanities. Thus, the purpose of the VEP is twofold: 1) to provide educators with a central resource that facilitates both teaching and research, and 2) to encourage independent inquiry amongst students, regardless of their locale.

The Virtual Education Project is currently seeking submissions for photo (or video—email for details) tours of domestic and international sites relevant to the study of the humanities. We are interested in tour submissions that explore local museums, author/artist homes, memorials, public artworks, and any significant cultural or community sites that will aid in the study and/or teaching of the humanities.

We welcome proposals for virtual tours related to the study of the arts, humanities, and sciences, including literature, theatre and/or performance, history, philosophy, rhetoric, and the STEM fields (e.g., the Nikola Tesla Museums in Brograd, Serbia, and Shoreham, NY). The list of examples for this initial Call for Contributions is a starting point, and we encourage you to submit a proposal for a site near you.

Potential tours topics might include (but are in no way limited to):
The Old Manse (Concord, MA)
Emily Dickinson House & Museum: The Homestead & The Evergreens (Amherst, MA)
W.E.B. Du Bois’s National Historic Site (Great Barrington, MA)
Walt Whitman House (Camden, NJ)
William Carlos Williams House (Rutherford, NJ)
Edgar Allan Poe Museum (Richmond, VA)
Thomas Wolfe House (Asheville, NC)
Mark Twain House (Hartford, CT)
Harriet Beecher Stowe House (Hartford, CT)
Ida B. Wells-Barnett House (Chicago, IL)
Jane Addams Hull-House Museum (Chicago, IL)
The House of Happy Walls Museum, Jack London (Glen Ellen, CA)
The Wolf House Ruins, Jack London (Glen Ellen, CA)
John Steinbeck House (Salinas, CA)
Andalusia, Home of Flannery O’Connor (Milledgeville, GA)
Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield (Kennesaw, GA)
Ernest Hemingway Home & Museum (Key West, FL)
Lamb House, Henry James (Rye, East Sussex, England)
Monk’s House, Virginia Woolf (Lewes, East Sussex, England)
Thomas Hardy’s Cottage (Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, England)
Capela dos Capuchos (Sintra, Lisbon, Portugal)
The Houses of Pablo Neruda (Chile)
Vladimir Nabokov House Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia)
Borobudur Temple Compounds (Magelang, Central Java, Indonesia)
Nelson Mandela’s Capture Site (Howick, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa); Prison Site (Robben Island, Wescape, South Africa); and The Mandela House (Orlando, Soweto, South Africa)

Spread the word!