{"id":7859,"date":"2026-05-13T11:10:42","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T16:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/?p=7859"},"modified":"2026-05-13T11:10:44","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T16:10:44","slug":"ui-libraries-history-professor-launch-interactive-public-digital-humanities-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/2026\/05\/13\/ui-libraries-history-professor-launch-interactive-public-digital-humanities-website\/","title":{"rendered":"UI Libraries, history professor launch interactive public digital humanities website"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n<p>A collaborative digital humanities project supported by the University of Iowa Libraries has launched. <em>A Just and True Return<\/em> (JTR) is led by Cory Young, assistant professor in the UI Department of History.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Developed with technical support from the Libraries\u2019 Digital Scholarship and Publishing Studio (DSPS), JTR is a publicly accessible database of Pennsylvania\u2019s surviving county slave registrations. The project brings together documents from more than a dozen repositories across three states, highlighting the lived realities of gradual abolition.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The interactive website features essays written by descendants of individuals recorded in the registrations, offering historical context alongside an interactive map that allows users to browse records by county. These elements work together to humanize the data and expand how scholars and the public engage with the history of slavery in the United States.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople rarely put \u2018Pennsylvania\u2019 and \u2018slavery\u2019 in the same sentence,\u201d Young said. \u201cYet these records remind us that in order for a state to become the first to abolish slavery, it had to exist there.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Young said the project is intended to help students, scholars, and descendants more easily discover the thousands of people whose lives were shaped by Pennsylvania\u2019s system of gradual abolition.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Young received funding from a 2024 <a href=\"https:\/\/research.uiowa.edu\/news\/2025\/02\/ovpr-supports-seven-faculty-projects-through-arts-and-humanities-initiative\">Arts and Humanities Initiative standard grant<\/a>, a competitive, internally reviewed grant program.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/justandtrue.lib.uiowa.edu\/\">View<\/a> <em>A Just and True Return <\/em>database<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A collaborative digital humanities project supported by the University of Iowa Libraries has launched. A Just and True Return (JTR) is led by Cory Young, assistant professor in the UI Department of History.\u00a0 Developed with technical support from the Libraries\u2019 Digital Scholarship and Publishing Studio (DSPS), JTR is a publicly accessible database of Pennsylvania\u2019s surviving<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/2026\/05\/13\/ui-libraries-history-professor-launch-interactive-public-digital-humanities-website\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;UI Libraries, history professor launch interactive public digital humanities website&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":207,"featured_media":7861,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,31],"tags":[23,76,70,66],"syndication":[21,60],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7859"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/207"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7859"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7863,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7859\/revisions\/7863"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7859"},{"taxonomy":"syndication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/syndication?post=7859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}