Presenting Digital Harlem — and the Australians Who Run It

The first thing that comes to most minds when someone says Harlem probably isn't Australia. Sure a group of teenagers in Queensland is credited for sparking the Harlem Shake meme, at least by Wikipedia, but that's much more about shaking than Harlem, per se. There is, however, an online effort that stands to forge a bond between the places in a far more robust (if less viral) way.

Presenting Digital Harlem: a research collaboration, centering on everyday life in the neighborhood between 1915 and 1930, run by four historians at the University of Sydney. Started by Shane White — with the assistance of Stephen Garton, Graham White, and Stephen Robertson — Digital Harlem has led to scholarly articles about family, vice, and black-white interactions in the area during the interwar period, as well as a book about gambling. In 2009 the site won a prize for digital innovation from the American Historical Association.