Fall 2024 | Tu/Th 9:30am-10:50am | UH 08 | 3 credit hours
Course Overview
Welcome to the course page for HIST 4385/5390: Digital History at The University of Texas at Arlington! In this course, you will become a digital historian by using digital tools to research, analyze, and share history. Working in a collaborative lab environment, we will learn about a particular topic in history – the era of the American Revolution – by employing digital tools to answer historical questions and generate new insights. Every week or so we will learn a new digital tool and practice using it together in class. These mini skill projects will make up an online portfolio (aka a personal website) of your digital work.
The main goals of this course are to increase your knowledge in the era of the American Revolution and its connections to the present, build your skills in digital literacy, and to create a personal digital portfolio that showcases your work to the world and to future employers.
Skills You Will Learn
Throughout the class, we will learn and explore a variety of free digital tools and methods by completing mini skill projects about early American history. You do not need to have any experience with these tools, methods, or even coding to do this work; we will learn together as a class! Some of the skills we will work on include:
- Building an interactive timeline
- Using maps to create digital stories
- Designing and creating an online exhibit
- Collaboratively building a database from a historical collection
- Creating data visualizations
- Evaluating existing digital history scholarship and projects
- Understanding and thinking critically about information technology, data management, data ethics, and AI
These digital skills are important to many professional tracks and will set you up for success in your future career: graduate school, business, teaching and education, libraries and archives, museums and public history, historic preservation, law, government, publishing, journalism, and more!
Materials
Nora Slonimsky, Mark Boonshoft, and Ben Wright, eds. American Revolutions in the Digital Age (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2024). This book is an open access resource, and the e- book version is available for free online.
Joseph L. Locke and Ben Wright, eds. The American Yawp: A Massively Collaborative Open U.S. History Textbook, Volume 1 Before 1877 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019). This textbook is an open educational resource and is available for free online (If you wish, you may purchase a printed copy in the UTA bookstore).
$45 Reclaim Shared Hosting Account and Domain Registration for one year. You will need to purchase a $30 annual personal plan from Reclaim Hosting with a $15 new domain registration.
Additional readings, digital history projects, and tools for each class will be listed in the Course Schedule. All additional materials are available for free online.
Course Schedule
Week 1 – Tuesday, August 20: Introduction
In class:
- whatisdigitalhumanities.com
Assignment:
- Buy a Reclaim Shared Hosting Personal Plan and Register a Domain
- Technology Survey
Thursday, August 22: Creating a Web Presence and Exploring Digital History Projects
Readings:
- Miriam Posner, Stewart Varner, and Brian Coxall, “Creating Your Web Presence”
- Dan Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig, Digital History, “Introduction: Promises and Perils of Digital History” and “Getting Started”
In class:
- Installing WordPress through Reclaim Hosting
- https://wordpress.com/support/
- OAH Guidelines for Digital History Reviews
- Papers of the War Department
- The George Washington Financial Papers Project
Assignments:
- Mini Skill #1: Setting up a WordPress Site
- Blog Post #1: Digital History Project Review
Week 2 – Tuesday, August 27: The Promises and Perils of American Revolutions in the Digital Age
In class:
- Tips for customizing your WordPress sites
- Discussion of Dan Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig, Digital History, “Introduction: Promises and Perils of Digital History” (you don’t have to read this before class since the site was down last week- I will bring up the main points and we will discuss)
- Primary Sources:
Thursday, August 29: The Internet, Finding Secondary Sources, and Introduction to Zotero
Readings:
- What Happens When You Do a Google Search?
- “How the Internet Works in 5 Minutes”
- How the Internet Travels Across Oceans
- “The Web at 25 in the U.S.” and https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2014/02/27/part-1-how-the-internet-has-woven-itself-into-american-life/
In class:
- zbib.org
- Downloading Zotero
- Zotero Quick Start Guide
- UTA Library databases
- JSTOR
- Chicago Manual of Style
- Mini Skill #2, Part 1: Zotero
Week 3 – Tuesday, September 3: Colonial Lives in an Atlantic World
Readings:
- The American Yawp, Chapter 4: Colonial Society, I-III
Thursday, September 5: Digitization of Primary Sources
Readings:
- American Revolutions in the Digital Age, Ch. 12: “Who Stands in the Digital Shadows? “City of Refuge” at the Intersection of “Old” and “New” Media in the Age of the Digital Humanities,” Marcus Nevius
In class:
- Special Collections Visit
Assignments:
- Blog Post #2: Digitization
Week 4 – Tuesday, September 10: Imperial Battlegrounds
Readings:
- The American Yawp, Chapter 4: Colonial Society, V-VII
- Worlds Turned Upside Down Podcast, Episode 1: The Balance, (can listen to the whole episode but focus on the intro to min. 8:30)
In class:
- Primary Sources:
Thursday, September 12: Finding Primary Sources
Readings:
- Sam Wineburg, “Thinking Like a Historian”
- American Revolutions in the Digital Age, Ch. 3: “Discovering Revolution in Digital Sources Other[ed] Colonial Voices,” Dorothy Berry
In class:
- DPLA
- Library of Congress
- Museum of the American Revolution Collections
- Founders Online
- GW Library and Museum Collections
Assignments:
Week 5 – Tuesday, September 17: The Road to Revolution through TimelineJS
Readings:
- American Yawp, Chapter 5: The American Revolution, I-III
In class:
- TimelineJS
- The Historiography of the American Revolution: A Timeline, by Dr. Michael D. Hattem
- Civil War and Reconstruction Timeline, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
Assignments:
- Mini Skill #3: TimelineJS
Thursday, September 19: Metadata, Omeka, and Copyright
Readings:
- Explore Dublin Core, “Metadata Basics”
- Digital History, “Sharing the Property of Others: Copyright and the Public Domain”
- Optional: American Revolutions in the Digital Age, Ch. 15: “Copyright and Historical Dangers of Licensing Regimes in the Digital Age,” Kyle Courtney
In class:
- Copyright
- Metadata
- Omeka
Assignments:
- Mini Skill #4, Part 1: Omeka Items
Week 6 – Tuesday, September 24: Digital Public History
Readings:
- Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016, “Public, First,” Sheila Brennan
- American Revolutions in the Digital Age, Ch.1: “Digital Public History at Three Presidential Home Sites,” Lindsay M. Chervinsky and Whitney Nell Stewart
Thursday, September 26: Creating Omeka Exhibits
Readings:
Assignment:
- Mini Skill #4, Part 2: Omeka Exhibit
Week 7 – Tuesday, October 1: Creating Omeka Exhibits, continued
Readings:
- American Yawp, Chapter 5: The American Revolution, IV-V
In class:
Omeka Exhibit Planning Worksheet from Denise Hattwig:
Thursday, October 3: Digital Storytelling
In class:
- Visit to Digital Studio in Library
Week 8 – Tuesday, October 8: Omeka Exhibits Workshop
- Quiz #1 Due in Canvas
In class:
- Omeka Exhibits Discussion and Workshop
Thursday, October 10: Mapping Literacy and Georeferencing
Readings:
- Richard White, “What is Spatial History?”
In class:
- Boston Now and Then
- Historic Topographic Maps View – USGS
- Map Warper
- Richard H. Brown Revolutionary War Map Collection
- ARGO
- David Rumsey Map Collection
- Library of Congress
- Leventhal Map Collection
Assignment:
- Mini Skill #5: Georeferencing
Week 9 – Tuesday, October 15: The War for Independence and Data Maps
No readings
In class:
- Native Land Digital
- Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States
- Old Eighth Ward Harrisburg
- Geography of the Post
- A Map of Baseball Nation
- Midterm Elections
- Mapping Inequality
- Pox Americana
Thursday, October 17: StoryMapping
Readings:
- Explore Molly Nebiolo, Visualizing Colonial Philadelphia
- American Revolutions in the Digital Age Ch. 6: “Visualizing City-Spaces during the Age of Revolutions,” Molly Nebiolo
In class:
- Visualizing Colonial Philadelphia
- Digital reDiscovery: A Virtual Tour of James Fort
- ArcGIS Storymaps Guided Tour Tutorial
- ArcGIS Storymaps – UTA Login
Assignments:
- Mini Skill #6: ArcGIS Storymaps
Week 10 – Tuesday, October 22: The Revolution Within
Readings:
- American Yawp, Chapter 5: The American Revolution, VI
- American Revolutions in the Digital Age Ch. 2: “New Media and Old Problems: Restoring Humanity in the Maryland Loyalism Project,” Kyle Roberts and Benjamin Bankhurst
- Optional: American Revolutions in the Digital Age Ch. 10 “By Conversation with a Lady Women’s Correspondence Networks in the Founders Online Database,” Maeve Kane
In class:
- Maryland Loyalism Project
- Abigail Adams and John Adams’ Letters
- Freedom Petition to Massachusetts Government
- Treaty at Fort Stanwix between US and Native Nations
- Excerpt from Pennsylvania State Constitution
Thursday, October 24: Databases
Readings:
- American Revolutions in the Digital Age Ch. 4 “Building a Relational Database to Explore Enslaved Midwives’ Work in Early America,” Sara Collini
- “Spreadsheet Thinking vs. Database Thinking”
- Airtable, “What is a Relational Database?”
In class:
Assignments:
- Mini Skill #7: Databases, Part I
Week 11 – Tuesday, October 29: Databases, continued
In class:
- Airtable
- Database of Mount Vernon’s Enslaved Community
- Enslaved.org
- Papers of the War Department
- Founders Online
Thursday, October 31: Databases, continued
In class:
Assignments:
- Mini Skill #7: Databases, Part 2
Week 12 – Tuesday, November 5: Media Literacy, News Anxiety, and the Founding of a Nation
Readings:
- American Revolutions in the Digital Age Ch. 14, “A Busy, Bustling, Disputatious Tone” News Anxiety in the Age of Revolutions and Today,” Joseph M. Adelman
- Optional: American Revolutions in the Digital Age Ch. 13, “Media Literacy in Revolutionary America,” Jordan E. Taylor
In Class:
Thursday, November 7: Text Mining
Readings:
- Ted Underwood,“Seven Ways Humanists are Using Computers to Understand Text”
- Explore Cameron Blevins, Topic Modelling Martha Ballard’s Diary
In class:
Assignments:
- Mini Skill #8: Text Analysis
Week 13 – Tuesday, November 12: Slavery, Freedom, and the History of Data Visualization
Readings:
- Optional: American Revolutions in the Digital Age Ch. 7 “Rethinking Enslaved Containment and Mobility in North Carolina’s 1821 Insurrectionary Scare,” Christy Hyman
- Optional: American Revolutions in the Digital Age Ch. 5. “Geographies of Emancipation Geospatial Technology in Mapping Black Thought in the Age of Revolutions,” Jessica Parr
In class:
- Map showing the distribution of the slave population 1860
- Charts and graphs showing the condition of African Americans at the turn of the century
- The Spread of U.S. Slavery
- Freedom on the Move
- Tableau Public
- How to Spot Visualization Lies
Thursday, November 14: Data Visualization
Meet at the Day Family Research Lab 5th Floor in Central Library
Readings
- John Theibault, Writing History in the Digital Age, “Visualizations and Historical Arguments”
- Optional: Kim Gallon, Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016, “Making a Case for the Black Digital Humanities”
In class:
Assignment:
- Mini Skill #9: Data Visualization
Week 14 – Tuesday, November 19: Artificial Intelligence and Critical Digital History
Readings:
- Google, “What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?”
- Joy Buolamwini, “AI, Ain’t I A Woman?”
- Lauren Tilton, “Relating to Historical Sources,” in “Artificial Intelligence and the Practice of History: A Forum”
- Optional: Safiya Umoja Noble, “A Society, Searching,” in Algorithms of Oppression How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (available online through UTA library)
In class:
- FamilySearch Labs
- Library of Congress Newspaper Navigator
- UTA Microsoft Copilot
- Joy Buolamwini, “AI, Ain’t I A Woman?”
- Privacy, identity, and autonomy in the age of big data and AI – Sandra Wachter, University of Oxford
Thursday, November 21: Video Games as Historical Scholarship?
Readings:
- James Coltrain and Stephen Ramsay, Debates in the Digital Humanities 2019, Can Video Games Be Humanities Scholarship?
- “Assassins Creed Liberation Examines Colonial Blacks”
- Trevor Owens,“Games as Historical Scholarship
In class:
- The Oregon Trail original version
- The Oregon Trail on Apple Arcade
Assignment:
- Blog Post #3: AI or Video Games
Week 15 – Tuesday, November 26: No Class
- Work on Quiz #2 in Canvas
- Work on Blog Post #3: AI or Video Games
Week 16 – Tuesday, December 3: Reflections
- Final Reflection/Final Essay Due by Tuesday, December 10
This course uses the HIST 390 model at George Mason University and builds upon the syllabi of Amanda Regan, Lincoln Mullen, Erin Bush, Jessica Dauterive, and Mills Kelly. Components of this course were also inspired by the pedagogical work of Kelly Schrum, Cindy Kierner, and Josh Catalano.
Sara Collini, Ph.D. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0