'WWI Immigrant Poetry Project' creates a digital archive and annotated edition of German-American poems
The IDRH is thrilled to announce the release of the WWI Immigrant Poetry Project. Created by Lorie Vanchena, associate professor of German Studies, the project creates a digital repository and annotated edition of poems written by German Americans during the decade of the Great War. Largely absent from scholarship on the history and culture of Germans and their descendants in America, this poetry sheds light on the complexities of German-American national identity during a time of upheaval and significant change for this immigrant group—the largest and most established non-English-speaking ethnic group in the United States on the eve of the First World War.
The project began with a 2015 seed grant from the IDRH which made which made it possible to hire three undergraduates. IDRH staff trained the students and project director in TEI and encoding in XML. Research for the WWI Immigrant Poetry Project has identified virtually unknown sources of German-American poetry beyond those currently included in the archive. The project is considered ongoing, with more annotated poems on the way