HISTORY H-650: History and the New Media
Indiana University,
Spring, 2007
Friday,
11:15-1:10
Student Building 230
ksword@indiana.edu Office
hours: Th 11-12:30
and by appointment
Section: 26146
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This colloquium is designed
to help humanities scholars think systematically about how digital Ònew mediaÓ
affect their work. We will
explore the vast array of digital resources historians use in research, in
teaching, and to engage the public outside of academia. Our common readings will include
highlights from the lively debate between academic techno-enthusiasts and
techno-skeptics, a range of exemplary digital projects, and a pragmatic guide
to creating oneÕs own digital tools.
The emphasis of the course, however, is on building collective knowledge
out of individual investigation of the resources most relevant to our own
fields. We will be helping each other to think broadly
about what has been done and what might be done with the Ònew media,Ó while at
the same time addressing more concrete questions about what is possible and
wise for us individually.
COURSE
REQUIREMENTS
The
primary goal of this course is to give you a structured opportunity to
determine what digital tools you will need for your own scholarly endeavors,
and begin to acquire the necessary technical skills. Its success as a colloquium, however, depends on your active
efforts to share your expertise. I
expect you to do this by staying on top of the assigned readings and exercises,
and by consistent participation in class discussions. I assume that studentsÕ levels of technical competence
will vary, but that we will all be able to learn from each othersÕ experiences
as students of particular fields, as teachers, and as users of digital tools.
You will
be evaluated on:
¥ Attendance
(mandatory) and active
participation in class discussions
¥ Short
weekly assignments (Blogs, wiki
exercises, etc.)
¥ Collaborative
planning for one open class discussion
¥ Proposal
& Architecture for a Digital Project (Some possible projects might include: a database related to your
research, an original course website, or
virtual museum exhibit. )
¥ Peer
review of classmates project(s)
Please see the COURSE WEB
SITE: http://www.indiana.edu/~dighist
for details about these
assignments, course policies, etc. The
website will be updated throughout the semester. Information found there supersedes that on the printed
syllabus. Students are responsible
for information found on the site, so please check it regularly.
READING
AND RESOURCES
Our common readings can be obtained digitally, and the
on-line syllabus includes the relevant links. Our core text is available for free on-line at http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory,
but I have ordered copies through the bookstore for those of you who (like me)
find books convenient. This is:
Daniel J. Cohen and Roy
Rosenzweig. Digital history : a guide to gathering, preserving, and
presenting the past on the Web.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.
You are expected to use the
money you would ordinarily spend on books to purchase software and training
manuals appropriate to the digital project you envision pursuing in the
course. We will be
discussing tools for database and web design during the first weeks of the
course, and you can use these conversations to determine your choices. Several entry-level
guidebooks for these topics are on reserve at the Herman B. Wells library.
COURSE
SCHEDULE*
* This schedule is tentative. Where appropriate, I will alter the
specific assignments and the order of topics to suit the needs of class
participants.
* Many of the weekly assignments
in this course were designed by T. Mills Kelly and Roy Rosenzweig of George
Mason University. I am indebted to
them for their permission to use them here, as well as for their invaluable
work at the Center for History and the New Media.
Week 1: January 12: Architecture and Plumbing
Introductions: Who we are, what we do, and what we use
to do it.
Finalize syllabus. Establish working groups,
responsibility for collaborative exercises.
Read: Syllabus,
Course Policies, Assignments found on the course website: http://www.indiana.edu/~dighist
Alternate
New Media courses:
Come
prepared to talk about your interest, experience, and project ideas, and to
help finalize the syllabus.
Set up a
blog, if you donÕt already have one. You can use any system you want,
though the Center for History and New Media folks recommend Wordpress
http://wordpress.org/, Typepad
http://www.typepad.com/,
or Blogger
http://www.blogger.com/start.
Once you've set up your blog, e-mail me the URL, and I'll add you to the course
blogroll.
Week 2: January 19: Varieties of Digital History
Read:
¥ Roy Rosenzweig and Daniel Cohen, Chapter 1 "Exploring the History WebÓ Digital
History
¥ Vernon Takeshita,
"Tangled Webs: The Limits of Historical Analysis on the Internet"
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~history/newsletter/spring01/web.html
¥ Phil Agre,
"Designing Genres for New Media: Social, Economic, and Political
Contexts," http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/genre.html
Visit and evaluate four
of the following websites, and a site of your own choosing: Don't just quickly browse; spend a significant amount of
time (enough time to look at everything or, if you can't look at
everything--certainly the case at Valley of the Shadow -then spend at least
two hours):
The Valley of the Shadow:
Two Communities in the American Civil War
http://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/
National Geographic:
Remembering Pearl Harbor
http://plasma.nationalgeographic.com/pearlharbor/
Brainerd, Kansas: Time,
Place, and Memory on the Web
http://www.rootinaround.com/brainerd/
Do History http://www.dohistory.org/
One project from the
Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities website: http://iath.virginia.edu
Write and post to your
blog (use categories
"website evaluation" and your name): An evaluation (500-1000 words)
of one these sites, using the Journal of American History evaluation guidelines
http://chnm.gmu.edu/jah
and, where relevant, drawing on some of the
week's reading. Note especially the questions in the key areas of content,
form, audience/use, and new media.
Week 3: January 26: The Future of Historical
Narrative?
Read: [Still
making selections]
¥ George Landow,
Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology. Amplified, updated version of Chapter One (1996). (just read
"Hypertextual Derrida, Poststructuralist Nelson?"; "The
Definition of Hypertext and Its History as a Concept:" and
"Predictions.")
http://www.scholars.nus.edu.sg/landow/cpace/ht/jhup/contents.html
¥ William Cronon,
"A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narratives," Journal of
American History, 78:4 (March, 1992),
1347-1376
¥ Keith Jenkins,
"Introduction: on being open about our closures," in Jenkins, ed., The
Postmodern History Reader (1997), ER.
¥ Lev
Manovich, "What is New Media," and "The Forms," pp. 18-61,
213-43 in The Language of New Media, ER.
Frameworks: "Forum on Hypertext
Scholarship: AQ as Web-Zine: Responses to AQ's Experimental Online Issue,"
American Quarterly (June 1999), commentaries by Roy Rosenzweig, James
Castonguay, Thomas Thurston, M. David Westbrook, Louise Krasniewicz and Michael
Blitz, Susan Smulyan, Christopher P Wilson, and Randall Bass, all available
online through Project Muse.
David Staley, Computers,
Visualization, and History, introduction
and chapter 4
Get
on the Web:
Read:
Cohen and Rosenzweig Chapter 2:
ÒGetting Started . . . Ò
Obtain Steel space and create homepage . . .
Week 4: February 2: Databases, Small [add GIS?]
Read:
1) Tools overview, as needed:
¥ Oppel,
Andrew J., and ebrary Inc. Databases demystified McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2004 [cited. Available from http://site.ebrary.com/lib/iupui/Doc?id=10085488
Available on campus and off-campus with authorized logon
2) Three of the following combinations of secondary and primary
sources, with an
¥ Ulrich,
Laurel Thatcher. "Wheels, Looms and the Gender Division of Labor in
Eighteenth-Century New England." William and Mary Quarterly LV, no. 1 (2001): 3-38.
¥ÒHow to Read Probate Records,Ó
and record for Dr. Benjamin Page,
DoHistory.org
¥ Jones,
Alice Hanson. American Colonial Wealth: Documents and Methods. 3
vols. New York: Arno Press, 1977: [
pages]
¥ Ulrich,
Laurel Thatcher. The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of
an American Myth. New York: Vintage Books,
2001: [ pages]
Hannah
Matthews Account Book
¥ Lepore, Jill. New York burning : liberty,
slavery, and conspiracy in eighteenth-century Manhattan. 1st ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005: [ pages]
and Appendix
¥Fenn,
Elizabeth A. Pox Americana : the great smallpox epidemic of 1775-82. 1st ed. New York: Hill and Wang, 2001: [ pages]
¥ Ayers, Edward L. In the presence of mine
enemies : war in the heart of America, 1859-1863. 1st ed, The Valley of the shadow project. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003: [ pages]
[Valley of the
Shadow]
Post:
1) An article or monograph from your field in which a database
was (or appears to have been) used to collect and organize sources. What questions is the historian
asking, and how does the database help her answer them? How does the approach
in this source compare with other (especially pre-digital) attempts to address
these questions?
2) A source related to your own work that might benefit from
organization in a database.
What are your questions?
How would you break down your material, and what do you think the payoff
would be?
Week 5: February 9: Databases, Large Social Science as Resource and Model
Guest Moderator: George Alter
Search
the data sets inventoried by IUPMS
and ICPSR for material related to your field.
Exercises
using:
http://www.socialexplorer.com/pub/home/home.aspx
Title:
Historical Statistics of the United States
Resource URL: http://bert.lib.indiana.edu:2048/login?url=http://hsus.cambridge.org/HSUSWeb
To link to this resource use:
http://www.libraries.iub.edu/scripts/countResources.php?resourceId=2219458
Read:
Alter, George. "Theories
of Fertility Decline: A
Nonspecialist's Guide to the Current Debate." In The European experience
of declining fertility, 1850-1970 : the quiet revolution, edited by John R.
Gillis, Louise Tilly and David Levine, xii, 385 p. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell,
1992.
Alter, George, Muriel Neven,
and Michel Oris. "Economic Development and Differential Fertility in Rural
and Urban Eastern Belgium, 1812-1899." In Chaire Quetelet 2005.
Alter, George, and Michel Oris.
"Childhood Conditions, Migration, and Mortality: Migrants and Natives in Nineteenth-century
Cities." 2005.
Week 6: February 16:
Databases, Large
Digitization and the Culture of ÒAbundanceÓ
[What is an Archive?]
Guest Moderator: Celestina Wroth
¥ Cohen and Rosenzweig, Doing Digital History, chapters 3, 7, and 8 (digitization, copyright, and
preservation).
¥ Roy Rosenzweig,
"Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era,"
American Historical Review, June 2003, http://chnm.gmu.edu/assets/historyessays/scarcity.html
Choose
an online archive (see list for suggestions) and review it carefully. Post on
blog ("archives/research" and your name) an idea for a historical
research and writing project based on that archive that could not be carried
out--or at least not carried out easily--with a print-based archive. Comment
briefly on the structure, interface, search, and presentation of sources. Is
this a well-structured and user friendly archive? Comment also on any digital
tools (for search and discovery or analysis and organization or presentation
and display) that would make it easier for you to complete that research and
writing project. The project doesn't need to be based exclusively on the online
resources but they should be a central feature. The goal of the exercise and
the reading for this week is to think about whether (and, if so, how) research
and writing will be different in the digital era.
Week 7: February 23: Archives and the Futures of
Research and Scholarship
Guest Moderator: Julie Bobay
Tentative Readings:
Week 8: March 2: The Challenge of Digital
Scholarship
Guest Moderator: Mike Grossberg
Read the following two examples of digital scholarship, and one
of your own choosing.
¥ Will Thomas and
Edward Ayers, "The Difference Slavery Made: A Close Analysis of Two
American Communities," http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/AHR/
You should also read the "overview"
on the AHR site, which you need to access through the library portal going to
the History Cooperative and then to the address:
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/108.5/thomas.html
¥ Lynn Hunt, Jack
Censer, "Images of the French Revolution" at
http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/imaging/home.html
Username is "imaging" and
password is
"revolution."
The following are possible
choices for your third reading.
You are also welcome to select one from your own field; let me know if
you choose this option so that I can add the link.
¥ Charles Hardy III
& Allesandro Portelli, "I Can Almost See the Lights of Home ~ A
Field Trip to Harlan
County, Kentucky," Journal of Multimedia History 2(1999)
¥ Philip J. Ethington,
"Los Angeles and the Problem of Urban Historical Knowledge"
American Historical Review
(December 2000)
http://cwis.usc.edu/dept/LAS/history/historylab/LAPUHK/index.html
¥ At http://chnm.gmu.edu/aq/:
"Dreaming Arnold
Schwarzenegger" by Louise Krasniewicz and Michael Blitz
"Hearsay of the Sun:
Photography, Identity, and the Law of Evidence in Nineteenth-Century American
Courts" by Thomas Thurston
"From Hogan's Alley to
Coconino County: Three Narratives of the Early Comic Strip" by David
Westbrook
Write and post a journal entry on whether the examples of
digital scholarship you examined fulfilled the "promise of digital
scholarship." Do they do anything genuinely new with new media? Do they do
it well?
Digital Project Proposal by
March 9. (See Guidelines.)
Week 9: March
9: Open
Session 1: Research Challenges and
Opportunities
Or Copyright?
[? – move this to week 9? Copyright:
¥ Lawrence Lessig,
Free Culture, chapter ten ("property"), which is available for free
download at http://free-culture.org/freecontent/
http://www.dancohen.org/blog/posts/raw_archives_and_hurricane_katrina]
March 16: Spring Recess
Part II: Pedagogy and the Public
Week 10: March 23: The New Media Classroom
Read:
¥ David Pace, "The
Amateur in the Operating Room: History and the Scholarship of Teaching,"
American Historical Review, October 2004.
¥ T. Mills Kelly, "For
Better or Worse? The Marriage of Web and the History Classroom," Journal
of the American Association for History and Computing, III/2,
August 2000
<http://mcel.pacificu.edu/JAHC/JAHCIII2/ARTICLES/kelly/kelly.html>.
And look at the following
websites:
¥ Who Killed William
Robinson? http://web.uvic.ca/history-robinson/. Think about the different ways that the evidence in this
site can be organized to arrive at different conclusions and how that feature
of the site might be useful for teaching historical thinking. Also, answer the
following question: Who killed William Robinson?
After you have studied it
yourself, look at undergraduate student responses to the site at:
http://chnm.gmu.edu/history/faculty/kelly/blogs/h100mt4/archives/cat_investigations.htm
[World History Matters: Try the several of the following exercises:
http://chnm.gmu.edu/whm/unpacking/mapsq1.php
http://chnm.gmu.edu/whm/unpacking/mapsq2ex.html
http://chnm.gmu.edu/whm/unpacking/mapsq3.php
http://chnm.gmu.edu/whm/unpacking/travelq1.php
http://chnm.gmu.edu/whm/unpacking/travelq2.php
http://chnm.gmu.edu/whm/unpacking/travelq4.html
http://chnm.gmu.edu/whm/unpacking/acctsq2.php
Women in World History: Examine at least two of the curriculum modules at:
http://chnm.gmu.edu/wwh/wwhlessons.html
Look also at the Webography
project (http://chnm.gmu.edu/webography). For this class, the username is clio and the password is
wired. After our discussion in class, write and post in the blog (Òdigital
classroomÓ and your name) your analysis of how you think digital media have and
may change the teaching and learning of history.]
Week 11: March 30: Popular and Public History Online
Visit and closely examine the following sites (tentative list, subject to change):
¥ Devices of Wonder: From
the World in a Box to Images on a Screen http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/devices/choice.html
¥ HistoryWired: A Few of Our Favorite Things http://historywired.si.edu/index.html
¥ The History Channel http://www.historychannel.com/. This is obviously too extensive to examine in full, but
spend enough time to get a full sense of the site.
¥ Bon Appetit! Julia
Child's Kitchen
http://www.americanhistory.si.edu/juliachild/default.asp
¥ Website: Raid on
Deerfield: The Many Stories of 1704:
www.1704.deerfield.history.museum
¥ Steve Dietz, "Telling Stories: Procedural Authorship
and Extracting Meaning from Museum Databases" http://www.archimuse.com/mw99/papers/dietz/dietz.html
¥ John Vergo, ""Less Clicking, More Watching":
Results from the User-Centered Design of aMulti-Institutional Website for Art
and Culture" ( delivered at the MW 2001, http://www.archimuse.com/mw2001/papers/vergo/vergo.html
Post an answer to one of
the following questions:
1. Which of these sites
most effectively conveys the past to a "general" audience? (And why?)
2. Which of these sites
makes the most effective use of new media? (And how?)
3. Which of these sites has
a design and interface that most effectively communicates its message and
serves its audience?
4. Which
of these sites has an interpretation of the past that either: a. best reflects
current scholarship or b. challenges its audiences?
Week 12: April 6: Games, Pedagogy and the Public
Guest moderator: Lee Sheldon
Londontown
Reading: Selections from Salen & Zimmerman, Rules of Play and Game Design Reader.
Week 13: April 13: The
Future of Historical Communities
[Contact: Colin Allen re: his work on the
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy?]
Read: Barry Wellman
and Milena Guila, "Virtual Communities as Communities: Net Surfers Don't
Ride Alone," in Marc Smith and Peter Kollock, eds., Communities in
Cyberspace (1999), hand out.
¥ Pew Internet
Project, "Online Communities: Networks that nurture long-distance
relationships and local ties" (October 2001), at http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=47
Read: Cohen and Rosenzweig, Doing Digital History, chapter 5 (audience).
Write and submit to the
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org) an original entry for a topic that interests you but that
is not yet dealt with in the Wikipedia. Then write and post in the blog (ÒwikiÓ
and your name) a discussion of why you chose the entry you chose, how writing
it for the Wikipedia was difficult or easy, which other topics you linked it
to, and what responses you received.
For the week, observe and
post a blog commentary ("community" and your name) on an online
historical community (See guidelines).
Week 14: April 20: Open Session II:
Pedagogy and the Public
Week 15: April 27: Proposal Presentations