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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Friday, March 29, 2024

"Half the History" uncovers the lives of historic American women

Award-winning screenplay writer Jennifer Burton gets into character as "Rachel Carlson" and joins the cast of characters as she directs "Half the History" inside the Crane Room at Tufts University.

Award-winning screenplay writer Jennifer Burton gets into character as "Rachel Carlson" and joins the cast of characters as she directs "Half the History" inside the Crane Room at Tufts University.

Professor of Practice in the Department of Drama and Dance Jennifer Burton and the students of her Advanced Production Seminar are working to bring under-told stories of American women to light through a multimedia project called "Half the History." 

The goal of the production, which combines short films, online multimedia and other educational and artistic media, is to assemble a biography for these women, according to Burton. 

“[The project] combines extraordinary events with a representation of what lives were like,” she said.

As part of the project, the production team is combining audio content, writing, photography, research and interviews with self-produced video content, Burton added. All this information will be available online for anyone to access on the project’s website, halfthehistory.com.

Burton stated that she began the project last year during her second year of teaching at Tufts after she was inspired by an opinion editorial she read about Jane Franklin, Benjamin Franklin’s sister, and the difficulties of telling her story. Though she intended the project to be a short assignment about Franklin, it became clear to her that the project was much larger.

“It has definitely grown since we started,” sophomore Ceili Hale noted. Hale became involved with the project last year.

Burton said the concept for “Half the History” was generated with the help of her students. The project represents a combined effort from herself, her students, her four sisters, other Tufts faculty and the surrounding community.

The goal to connect lesser-known historical information is growing not only at Tufts but also across the nation, according to Burton. She described how advances in resources through technology have made such information more accessible.

"[The project is] tying into this larger process that is happening across the country, which is finding these stories and piecing them together,” Burton said.

She said she stumbled upon such broad gaps in historical content while studying Jane Franklin and her brother. 

"[The siblings] wrote more letters to each other than they did to anyone else their entire lives … but for the first half of [Jane’s] life, her letters were lost … because no one thought to save [them],” she said, adding that the goal now is to piece together the rest of the story using the information available.

The production team is currently working on the story of Belinda Royall, a Ghanaian woman who was enslaved from ages 12 to 63 at the Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford. Royall obtained her freedom and petitioned Congress for a pension.

“[She argued that] her labor had been important in making the wealth that was part of this estate, and she succeeded,” Burton said, adding that Royall was one of the first people granted reparations from the United States.

According to senior Deborah Frank, the direction the group is taking to tell the story consists of not only an educational approach, but also a slam poetry angle proposed by sophomore Max Ribbans. Frank said that students working on the project have a lot of freedom, since Burton allows students to pursue their own ideas.

“We each get to tell [Burton] what we’re most interested in,” she said.

Hale noted that students involved in this project will be working with and shadowing professionals. Hale expressed excitement about getting to learn how to use sound equipment and hopes to apply these skills in a future profession. Frank, on the other hand, plans to work behind the camera and will help Burton direct.

Filming for the story of Belinda Royall will take place on Nov. 15 and 16 at Tufts and the Royall House. According to Burton, the Royall video should be completed by next semester once editing is complete.

The current challenge for the team is being able to represent the information in engaging ways without the proper computer science skills, Burton said. She added that she hopes to work with professionals to make the information as useful as possible to researchers and students, noting that spreading information about the topic is important in giving the project momentum.