Fall 2022
Dan Cohen
d.cohen@northeastern.edu
Introduction to the Course
This course provides a panoramic examination of the impact of digital media and technology on the theory and practice of history. Topics include the construction of scholarly websites, tools, and apps on historical topics, how research methods and historiography are being transformed by the digitization of primary sources, and the significance for the discipline of new approaches such as text- and data-mining. Students will investigate the potential advantages and disadvantages of a variety of digital technologies and explore the use of those technologies through a series of exercises.
Assignments
1) It is expected that you will blog at least once a week on that week’s reading, a minimum of 300 words, on a website that you will create and maintain. (30% of the final grade)
Student blogs:
2) A midterm essay of 7-8 pages in length. Choose a historical topic that you are interested in. How would you go about finding digital sources for that topic, or digitizing new ones? What would having these sources in digital media help you to analyze, present, or discover? What would be the advantages and disadvantages to doing this kind of digital work versus more traditional methods? What ethical issues would you encounter, and how would you overcome them or at least minimize them? This first project is due before class on Oct. 12. (25%)
3) A final project in which you will more fully envision a work of digital historical scholarship. Such a work will explore the past in part using digital methods such as text mining, mapping, and/or network analyses. This second project, of 10-12 pages in length, including any visualizations, is due by 5pm on Dec. 12. (35%)
4) Preparedness and active participation in every seminar. Attendance without participation is equivalent to absence. (10%)
Requirements and Resources
This course uses readings and digital resources that are either completely open, or freely available to you as Northeastern students since the library licenses those materials. The only cost, should you choose that option, is to acquire your own domain and web host, which should cost less than $50.
Syllabus
Sept 7
Introduction
- Digital media and technology
- Examination of digital environments under the hood
- The composition of a web page
- How apps are created and transfer information
- WordPress as a platform and for class blogs: Set up personal site using Sites at Northeastern, WordPress.com, or, for your own domain that you can retain in perpetuity, using Reclaim Hosting (How to: Installing WordPress on Reclaim Hosting)
- For review: Cohen & Rosenzweig, Digital History, ch. 2, “Getting Started: The Basic Technologies Behind the Web”
Sept 14
The Elusive Nature of New Media
- Lev Manovich, “What is New Media?” ch. 1 of The Language of New Media
- Errol Morris, “Photography as a Weapon”
- Roy Rosenzweig, “Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era”
Resources: Library of Congress Recommended Formats, Perma.cc, Documenting the Now, Internet Archive Wayback Machine, Chronicling America
Sept 21
What is Digital History?
- Ian Milligan, The Transformation of Historical Research in the Digital Age
- Read one of the following:
- “Interchange: The Promise of Digital History.” The Journal of American History 95, no. 2 (August 1, 2008): 452–491.
- Edward L. Ayers, “The Pasts and Futures of Digital History”
- Cohen & Rosenzweig, “Promises and Perils of Digital History”
Sept 28
The Uses and Abuses of Digitized Sources
- Julia Angwin, Jeff Larson, Surya Mattu and Lauren Kirchner, “Machine Bias”
- Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein, Data Feminism, “The Numbers Don’t Speak for Themselves”
- The Real Face of White Australia
- Santa Barbara Statement on Collections as Data
- Civil Rights & Restorative Justice Project Archive
Second half of the class, a practicum: Creating Websites with WordPress
Oct 5
Class will not meet (observance of Yom Kippur)
Oct 12
Theory and Application of Text Sources
- Lara Putnam, “The Transnational and the Text-Searchable: Digitized Sources and the Shadows They Cast“
- Frederick W. Gibbs, “New Forms of History: Critiquing Data and Its Representations“
- Ted Underwood, David Bamman, and Sabrina Lee, “The Transformation of Gender in English-Language Fiction”
Oct 19
Text practicum
Digital Integration Teaching Initiative visits class to discuss text tools
Explore and critique:
- Ben Fry, The Preservation of Favoured Traces
- Time Magazine Corpus of American English
- Voyant Tools (Voyant Tutorial)
- Google Books Ngram Viewer
Oct 26
Theory and Application of Maps and Geospatial Data
- Richard White, “What is Spatial History?”
- Robert K. Nelson, LaDale Winling, Richard Marciano, Nathan Connolly, et al., “Mapping Inequality” and “Renewing Inequality”
- Pamela Fletcher and Anne Helmreich, “Local/Global: Mapping Nineteenth-Century London’s Art Market”
Nov 2
Maps practicum
Digital Integration Teaching Initiative visits class to discuss mapping tools
Explore and critique:
- HyperCities
- 12 Sunsets: Exploring Ed Ruscha’s Archive
- Photogrammar
- NYC Space/Time Directory
- Atlascope Boston
Nov 9
Theory and Application of Networks and Other Visualizations of Data
- Weingart, Scott B. “Demystifying Networks, Parts I & II”
- Johanna Drucker, “Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display”
- Dan Edelstein, Paula Findlen, Giovanna Ceserani, Caroline Winterer, Nicole Coleman, “Historical Research in a Digital Age: Reflections from the Mapping the Republic of Letters Project”
- Winterer, Caroline. “Where Is America in the Republic of Letters?”
Nov 16
Networks and Visualizations Practicum
Please download Gephi ahead of of time.
Explore and critique:
- “Mapping the Republic of Letters”
- “Inside the Decisive Network”
- PixPlot
- “Quantizing Color in William Blake’s Illuminated Books”
- Additional resources and examples
Nov 23
No class, Thanksgiving break
Nov 30
Emerging issues and topics
- Andy Baio, “Opening the Pandora’s Box of AI Art”
- Johan Malmstedt, “Rhythms of Silence: Digital Audio Analysis of Swedish Radio Broadcasting, 1980-1989”
- Ryan Cordell, “Machine Learning + Libraries“
Dec 7
Presentations of Student Projects
Additional Resources
Programming Historian has nearly 100 lessons on more advanced techniques in digital history. These generally involve using at least modest coding.
