UCSB Memorial Archive

• In Event: OHA Poster Session and Project Bazaar

Abstract

On May 23, 2014 six UCSB undergraduate students were killed, and fourteen other individuals were injured in a crime spree that took place in Isla Vista, the commercial and residential community adjacent to the UCSB campus. In response to these tragic killings four spontaneous memorial sites were created by friends, family, and community members. Melissa Barthelemy, PhD student in Public History, formed the Ad-Hoc Memorial Preservation Committee to collect the thousands of condolence items left at the sites and which are now housed in the Special Research Collections of the UCSB Library.

For the one-year memorial anniversary Melissa served as curator and project manager for a large exhibit entitled “We Remember Them: Acts of Love and Compassion in Isla Vista,” which honored those who were killed and told the story of a community empowered by its own humanity in reacting to a collective loss. This student-run exhibit was visited by more than 1,800 people and it spanned more than 6,000 square feet. Recently the Collection and Exhibit received the Award of Merit for Leadership in History from the American Association for State and Local History. We would like to present our poster which we created for the National Council on Public History Conference this past March, along with our power point slide show of images and quotes.

If our proposal is accepted, we would alter our presentation to focus more on the oral history aspects of this project. This project has become the basis of Melissa’s dissertation and she has been conducting oral history interviews with the parents and friends of the victims for the past year and a half. We would also tie our presentation to the theme of the conference by discussing the digital aspects of this project, including the on-line memorial archive that we are currently building.

Authors

• Melissa Jane Barthelemy, JD, MA, UC Santa Barbara Public History Program

• Julia Diane Larson, UCSB Library