Course Schedule

Jan. 19th: Introduction to the Course

Practicum: setting up Reclaim Account and WordPress site

• Skim: Roy Rosenzweig and Dan Cohen, “Introduction,” Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web (2006), http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/introduction/

• *Skim: Various authors, “Interchange: The Promise of Digital History,” Journal of American History 95, 2 (September 2008), access via UA Libraries, Jstor
• “The Digital in the Humanities: An Interview with Sharon M. Leon,” L.A. Review of Books, July 10, 2016, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-digital-in-the-humanities-an-interview-with-sharo n-m-leon/

• Arguing with Digital History working group, “Digital History and Argument,” white paper, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (November 13, 2017), https://rrchnm.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/digital-history-and-argument.RRCHNM.pdf. 
• *Sherman Dorn, “Is Digital History More than an Argument About the Past?” in Writing History in the Digital Age, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/dh/12230987.0001.001/1:4/–writing-history-in-the-digital-ag e?g=dculture;rgn=div1;view=fulltext;xc=1#4.2

• Trevor Owens, “Where to Start? On Research Questions in the Digital Humanities,” August 22, 2014, http://www.trevorowens.org/2014/08/where-to-start-on-research-questions-in-the-digital-humanities/
• Katie Myers, “Manage Your Digital Identity,” Inside Higher Ed, March 19, 2013, https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/gradhacker/manage-your-digital-identity

The History of Digital History (grads: 3:15-5:30)

Practicum: Evaluating digital history sites

Read: 

• Skim: Rosenzweig and Cohen, “When the Web Was Young,” from Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web, https://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/exploring/1.php. 
• Daniel Allington, Sarah Brouillette, David Golumbia, “Neoliberal Tools (and Archives): A Political History of Digital Humanities,” L.A. Review of Books, May, 1, 2016, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/neoliberal-tools-archives-political-history-digital-hum anities/
• Sharon Leon, “Returning Women to the History of Digital History,” in Bodies of Information: Intersectional Feminism and Digital Humanities, eds. Liz Losh and Jacqueline Wernimont (Univ. of Minnesota, 2018), https://uadigitalhistory.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Leon-Complicating-a-Great-Man-Narrative-Of-DIgital-History-Jan-18-2021-2-00-PM.pdf
• *Tara McPherson, “Why are Digital Humanities so White? Or, Thinking the Histories of Race and Computation,” Debates in the Digital Humanities, ed. Matthew K. Gold (Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2012), https://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/read/untitled-88c11800-9446-469b-a3be-3fdb36bfbd1e/section/3c04ab7c-52ea-4d72-99c9-00ffbf3e56a5#toc. 
• Rebecca Onion, “Snapshots of History: Wildly Popular Accounts like @HistoryinPics are bad for History, bad for Twitter, bad for you,” Slate, February 5, 2014, https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/02/historyinpics-historicalpics-history-pics-why-the-wildly-popular-twitter-accounts-are-bad-for-history.html. 
• *The Public Historian, “Digital History Project Review Guidelines,” History@Work, National Council on Public History, https://ncph.org/publications-resources/publications/the-public-historian/guidelines/digital-history-project-review-guidelines/ (focus especially on the questions related to form and content of the site)
• American Association of Historians, “Guidelines for the Professional Evaluation of Digital Scholarship by Historians,” 2015, https://www.historians.org/teaching-and-learning/digital-history-resources/evaluation-of-digital-scholarship-in-history/guidelines-for-the-professional-evaluation-of-digital-scholarship-by-historians (you’ll see the link to download the guidelines at the top of the page)

Watch (40 mins): Miriam Posner, “How Did They Make That? Reverse-Engineering Digital Projects,” UCLA Digital Humanities, https://archive.org/embed/howdidtheymakethat

Collecting and Preserving History on the Web (grads 2-4:30)

Practicum: Understanding metadata, building collections in Omeka S

Guest: Laura Gentry, Special Collections and Digital Initiatives Librarian, UA

Read: 

• Roy Rosenzweig. “Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era.” The American Historical Review 108, no. 3 (2003): 735–62, https://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/links/pdf/introduction/0.6b.pdf.
• *Ansley T. Erikson, “Historical Research and the Problem of Categories: Reflections on 10,000 Digital Notecards,” in Writing History in the Digital Age, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/dh/12230987.0001.001/1:7/–writing-history-in-the-digital-ag e?g=dculture;rgn=div1;view=fulltext;xc=1#7. (scroll down for Erikson’s piece)
• Trevor Owens, “What do you Mean by Archive? Genres of Usage for Digital Preservers,” Library of Congress, February 27, 2014, https://blogs.loc.gov/thesignal/2014/02/what-do-you-mean-by-archive-genres-of-usage-for-digital-preservers/
• Jessica Marie Johnson, “Markup Bodies: Black [Life] Studies and Slavery [Death] Studies at the Digital Crossroads,” Social Text 36, no. 4 (Dec. 2018): 57-79, https://read.dukeupress.edu/social-text/article/36/4%20(137)/57/137032/Markup-BodiesBlack-Life-Studies-and-Slavery-Death
• Skim: Marvin Roger Anderson and Rebecca S. Wingo, “Harvesting History, Remembering Rondo,” in Digital Community Engagement: Partnering Communities with the Academy (Univ. of Cincinnati Press, 2020), https://ucincinnatipress.manifoldapp.org/read/4259da4f-74f6-4013-bdf4-cf97fcb500b0/section/8448f9fa-5d0c-4d0a-8ef6-d213bd4e7187. 
• Bergis Jules, Ed Summers, Dr. Vernon Mitchell, Jr., “Documenting the NOW White Paper: Ethical Considerations for Archiving Social Media Content Generated by Contemporary Social Movements: Challenges, Opportunities, Recommendations,” April 2018, https://www.docnow.io/docs/docnow-whitepaper-2018.pdf 
• “Copyright and Use Glossary,” Berkeley Institute for Advanced Media Institute, https://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/copyright-glossary/
• Skim: Emily Chen, Ashok Deb, and Emilio Ferrara, “#Election2020: The First Public Twitter Dataset on the 2020 Presidential Election,” October 1, 2020, https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.00600. 

Explore: 

• Documenting Ferguson, Washington University, http://digital.wustl.edu/ferguson/
• A Journal of the Plague Year, Arizona State University, https://covid-19archive.org/s/archive/page/Share

Digital Storytelling pt I (grads: 3:15-5:30)

Practicum: Building Omeka exhibits, introduction to Scalar

Read:

• Janet Murray, “From Additive to Expressive Form,” in Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (1998) 
• Karlyn Forner, et. al.. “Learn from the Past, Organize the Future: Building the SNCC Digital Gateway,” in Digital Community Engagement: Partnering Communities with the Academy (Univ. of Cincinnati Press, 2020),  https://ucincinnatipress.manifoldapp.org/read/4259da4f-74f6-4013-bdf4-cf97fcb500b0/section/e597a18f-faf6-4786-8889-3a02b1906d85
• *Sheila Brennan, “Getting the Stuff: Digital Cultural Heritage Collections, Absence, and Memory”–you can read here or watch here 
• Jane Stevens, “Tutorial: Multimedia Storytelling–Learn the Secrets from Experts,” Berkeley Advanced Media Institute, https://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/starttofinish/

Explore the following sites. In your blog post this week, choose one site and create an “anatomy” of how the site’s authors construct a narrative–how do they organize the story? What sources and media do they use? How much control does the user have in exploring and uncovering the story’s parts? 

• SNCC Digital Gateway: https://snccdigital.org/
• CSI Dixie: https://csidixie.org/
• The Invasion of America: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=eb6ca76e008543a89349ff2517db47e6

Digital Storytelling, pt. II: Podcasting (grads: 2-4:30)

Practicum: Sound recording and editing 

Undergraduate digital history site review due 2/19

Guest: Chip Brantley, UA College of Communications faculty member and co-creator of the White Lies podcast

Listen to the entire White Lies podcast before class–I encourage you to begin listening and taking notes on the podcast’s narrative approach several weeks in advance: https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510343/white-lies.

Universal Design and Accessibility (grads 3:15-5:30)

Practicum: Prioritizing accessibility in digital history projects 

Read:

• *Safiya Umoja Harris, “Toward a Critical Black Digital Humanities,” Debates in the Digital Humanities 2019, eds. Matthew K. Gold and Lauren Klein, (Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2019), https://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/projects/debates-in-the-digital-humanities-2019
• George H. Williams, “Disability, Universal Design, and the Digital Humanities,” Chap. 12 in Debates in the Digital Humanities, Matthew K. Gold., ed. (Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2012), https://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/projects/debates-in-the-digital-humanities
• WebAim, https://webaim.org/articles/, read all of the short articles in the “The User’s Perspective” section
• *Rick Godden and Jonathan Hsy, “Universal Design and its Discontents,” Disrupting the Digital Humanities, January 6, 2016, http://www.disruptingdh.com/universal-design-and-its-discontents/
• “Best Practices for Digital Humanities Projects,” University of Nebraska-Lincoln Center for Research in the Digital Humanities, https://cdrh.unl.edu/articles/best_practices#design
• “Accessibility Principles,” W3C Web Accessibility Initiative, https://www.w3.org/WAI/fundamentals/accessibility-principles/
• “Creating Accessible Documents in Microsoft Word,” University of Washington, https://www.washington.edu/accessibility/documents/word/

Playing History: Games and Gaming (grads: 2-4:30)

Practicum: Playing historically themed video/computer games with lessons from Mary Flanagan’s Critical Play

Guest: Dr. Anne Ladyem McDivitt, director, Alabama Digital Humanities Center, UA

Read: 

• Anne Ladyem McDivitt, Hot Tubs and Pac-Man: Gender and the Early Video Game Industry in the United States (DeGruyter Oldenbourg, 2020), undergraduates: chaps. 1, 3, 5; graduates: entire book (e-version available via UA Libraries)
• Jeremiah McCall, “Video Games as Participatory Public History,” in A Companion to Public History, ed. David Dean (Wiley, 2018)

Introduction to Civil War and Reconstruction Governors of Alabama project (grads: 2-4:30)

Practicum: transcribing and tagging Alabama governors papers

Guests: Dr. Lesley Gordon, University of Alabama, and Dr. Susannah Ural, University of Southern Mississippi

Read:

• Edward Ayers, Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the Nineteenth-Century South (Oxford, 1985), chaps. 1 and 4
• Leah Rawls Atkins, “Andrew B. Moore,” Encyclopedia of Alabama.
• Skim: Michael Fitzgerald, “A Mere Lapsus: Unionists and Conservative Dissidents During the Civil War,” in Reconstruction in Alabama: From Civil War to Redemption in the Cotton South (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2017) 
• Civil War and Reconstruction Governors of Mississippi, Tagging and Transcription Protocols, https://cwrgm.org/protocols

Explore:

• Civil War and Reconstruction Governors of Kentucky, Kentucky Historical Society: http://discovery.civilwargovernors.org/
• Civil War and Reconstruction Governors of Mississippi, University of Southern Mississippi, Mississippi Digital Library: https://cwrgm.org/
• Documents assigned to you in UA Box

Transcribing week (grads: 2-4:30)

We will dedicate this week to transcribing documents

Creating metadata for transcribed CWRGA documents (grads: 2-4:30)

Practicum: A deeper dive into Library of Congress Classification and Subject Headings, Dublin Core, and Omeka S

Guests: Dr. Anne Ladyem McDivitt, UA, and Meredith McDonough of the Alabama Department of Archives and History

Read: 

• Crystal Vaughn, “The Language of Cataloguing: Deconstructing and Decolonizing Systems of Organization in Libraries,” Dalhousie University, 2018
• Sara A. Howard and Steven A. Knowlton, “Browsing Through the Bias: The Library of Congress Classification and Subject Headings for African American Studies and LGBTQIA Studies,” Library Trends 67 no. 1 (2018): 74-88 (also browse appendix)
• CWRGA Metadata Protocols

Project work week (grads: 2-4:30)

This week we will meet but spend class time finishing our transcriptions (if need be), metadata, and visualizations. 

Apr. 6th: CWRGA Data Visualization II: Spatial Analysis and Mapping (grads: 3:15-5:30)

Practicum: introduction to narrative and data maps

• *Jo Guldi, “The Spatial Turn in History,” Spatial Humanities, University of Virginia Library, http://spatial.scholarslab.org/spatial-turn/the-spatial-turn-in-history/index.html
• Richard White, “What is Spatial History?” Spatial History Project, Stanford University, 2010, http://web.stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/cgi-bin/site/pub.php?id=29
• Cameron Blevins, “Mining and Mapping the Production of Space: A View from the World of Houston,” Spatial History Project, Stanford University, 2014, http://web.stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/cgi-bin/site/pub.php?id=93
• “Visualizing Emancipation,” University of Richmond, https://dsl.richmond.edu/emancipation/, skim all sections, watch animations
• Lewis Chou, “Top Ten Map Types in Data Visualization,” Towards Data Science, August 1, 2019, https://towardsdatascience.com/top-10-map-types-in-data-visualization-b3a80898ea70 
• *Mark Tebeau, “Listening to the City: Oral History and Place in the Digital Era,” Oral History Review 40, no. 1 (2013): 25-35

Explore:

• University of Richmond, Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America, https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=4/38.583/-104.238
• Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, Histories of the National Mall, http://mallhistory.org/

CWRGA Data Visualization I: Topic Modeling and Networks (grads: 3:15-5:30)

Practicum: Mallet and the Topic Modeling Tool, creating node graphs

Read:

• *Frederick W. Gibbs, “New Forms of History: Critiquing Data and Its Representations,” The American Historian, 2016, https://www.oah.org/tah/issues/2016/february/new-forms-of-history-critiquing-data-and-its-representations/
• Ted Underwood, “Topic Modeling Made Just Simple Enough,” https://tedunderwood.com/2012/04/07/topic-modeling-made-just-simple-enough/
• David M. Blei, “Probabilistic Topic Modeling,” Princeton University, https://www.eecis.udel.edu/~shatkay/Course/papers/UIntrotoTopicModelsBlei2011-5.pdf
• Cameron Blevins, “Topic Modeling Martha Ballard’s Diary,” April 1, 2010, http://www.cameronblevins.org/posts/topic-modeling-martha-ballards-diary/

Explore:

• Mining the Dispatch, Robert K. Nelson, University of Richmond, https://dsl.richmond.edu/dispatch/

Building the prototype (grads: 2-4:30)

In the final class we will come together to complete, assess, and reflect upon the CWRGA prototype.