The World Historical Gazetteer was invited to contribute an instructional video as part of a set of online modules and classroom resources focused on exploring place names as meaningful forms of social and geographic storytelling. The instructional video was created for the Tennessee Geographic Alliance as an extension of “What’s in a Name? Exploring Place Names as Forms of Social and Geographic Storytelling,” an interactive workshop that invited educators to explore the profound social, historical, and political meanings behind the names attached to places.
The video includes an introduction to the World Historical Gazetteer website and its features, presented by Ruth Mostern; highlights of datasets in the WHG index that reflect the contested nature of place names, presented by Palak Vashist; and a tutorial on creating your own collection of places in the WHG, presented by Ali Straub.
Other videos in the series explore the power of place name repatriation, tools for analyzing place names in social texts, and the relationship between names, identity, and memory.