Esse Quam Videri

This experimental digital humanities project utilizes documentary filmmaking and poetry as tools to contribute one multimodal account that amplifies and celebrates the diversity of the state of North Carolina, and by extension the United States. Positioned as a reclamation of the diversity and beauty of a US state deeply divided by race, class, gender, politics, and ideologies, creators Kelsey Dufresne and Margaret Baker invite a myriad of voices to recount their unique stories through individual installments of interviews and poetry. In the primary piece, residents of North Carolina recite lines from Langston Hughes’s poem, “Let America Be America Again,” magnifying the incredible diversity of the state’s population and offering a unified, cohesive visual narrative of the North Carolina experience. Entering into individuals’ daily rhythms, this project seeks to explore what it means to be a North Carolinian, an American, and what common threads draw us, as a people, together.