This presentation offers an example of a recent digital humanities project that used performance studies approaches to bring scholarly research on human-equine interdependence in urban history to a general public audience. An original, full-length documentary film, The Pull of Horses in Urban American Performance, 1860-1920, played at life-sized scale at the center of a library gallery exhibit of archival documents and material artifacts, The Pull of Horses on National and Local Histories and Identities. Including film clips, exhibit photos, a model horse, and documentation of audience response, the presentation shows how performative multi-media public engagements with the archive can illuminate key dynamics of the high-density co-existence that shaped the bodies and identities of both species with enduring impact down to the present day.
