Marquette — The Digital Past (Fall 2016)

Courses

Contact Information

Course Meetings: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11:00am-12:15pm, 104 Sensenbrenner Hall
Office: 203B Sensenbrenner Hall
Office Hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:30-3:00pm
Email: sharon.leon@marquette.edu
Twitter: @sleonchnm
Syllabus: http://www.6floors.org/teaching/marquette/

Summary

During this semester, we have several primary goals. First, we will to explore the historical experiences of enslaved persons in the United States as explained in their own words–starting with Frederick Douglass’ Narrative and moving on to other narratives and oral history interviews. Second, we will to use the theories and methods of digital history to investigate those experiences and their significance in new ways. In the process, we will work with a range of digitized primary sources, content management systems, mapping technologies, and approaches to the computational analysis of large text corpora. Everyone will experiment with these theories and methods in the context of their own web domain. At the same, we will all work together to answer some inquiry questions about the history and memory of slavery in a context of collaborative digital project.

Learning outcomes

    By the end of the course, each student will have

  1. developed a familiarity with current theories and methods of digital history;
  2. gained an improved ability to evaluate and learn about new digital tools for historical scholarship;
  3. developed a system for exercising intellectual control over digital resources;
  4. created individual digital presence;
  5. and, created a collaborative digital history project.

Required materials

  1. Reclaim Hosting account, which will cost $25 for a year of web hosting. This is in lieu of required book costs.
  2. Functional laptop with internet connection
  3. All readings will be open access or available through the university library journal subscriptions.
  4. Bibliography of initial secondary readings (for reference and to begin your research).

Major Assignments and Graded Work

  • Blog as reflection space [30%] Your blog will serve as the home base for most of your written work during the semester. You will be able to read the work of your classmates and engage with their reflections on the issues raised by our readings and activities. Thus, the majority of our intellectual work for the semester will take place in public.
  • Collaborative Digital History Project [40%] This project will be the major showcase for your learning this semester. While we’ll determine together the scope, depth, and character of the work, you will use digital tools and methods to ask and answer authentic historical inquiry questions that arise from our base material of slave narratives. The key dates for your work are as follows:
    1. Project Proposal/Contract: September 23, 2016/October 14, 2016 [5%]
    2. Penultimate Draft/Prototype: November 28, 2016 [10%]
    3. Peer Review: November 29-December 1, 2016 [5%]
    4. Presentation: December 6-8, 2016 [5%]
    5. Final Project Due: December 13, 2016 [15%]
  • Reflective Essay [15%] At the completion of the semester, you will write a reflective essay that summarizes your learning and growth during the class. These essays should be no more than 2,000 words. This is a chance for you to process your work and to consider the ways that it will contribute to your future ventures. Due: December 14, 2016
  • Participation [15%] Success in this course demands active participation from every member of the community. You are expected to prepare for class, attend each session, participate in discussion and hands-on sessions, and collaborate with your colleagues.

Procedures

Remaining decision points

  • Focus for collaborative project work, and the individual roles within that work
  • Platform for work: Omeka Classic (one or several) or Omeka S? [I’m leaning toward Omeka S. This really depends on your sense of adventure.]

Schedule

Week of August 30 — Introductions: Getting Started

Activities

Homework

  • Configure your blog
  • Write introductory blog post: Tell us what we need to know about you as a scholar. What are you interested in? What projects are you working on? What methods do you like?
  • About Page: Fill in some basic bio information on your about page (nothing too personal; remember this is a professional web presence).
  • Share URL
  • Read Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass for next week. Get started on another one.
Week of September 6 (Last day for Add/Drop) — Slave narratives

Activities

Homework

  • Read a slave narrative from Documenting the American South or from the FWP Slave Narratives
  • Begin your initial project exploration and research
  • Reflective Blog Post
Week of September 13 — Digital History — The Case of Slavery

Activities

    Review digital projects related to slavery:

  1. “The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War,” http://valley.lib.virginia.edu/.
  2. Edward Ayers and William G. Thomas, “The Difference Slavery Made,” The American Historical Review (2003), (http://www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/AHR/).

Homework
On your blog, write a critical appraisal of one of the slavery-related digital history projects below, using JAH review criteria, http://jah.oah.org/submit/digital-history-reviews/. Reviews should be 700-900 words.

  • What is the argument?
  • What is the content (assets, digital stuff)
  • What is the format/structure behind the site (can you tell?)
  • Who is the audience and is it addressing those people?
  • Does it make effective use of new media?
  • What do you think of this project?

Site list:

  1. “African American Pamphlets Home Page,” http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aap/aaphome.html.
  2. “Voices from the Days of Slavery, Audio Interviews (American Memory from the Library of Congress),” http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/voices/.
  3. “Welcome | The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition,” http://glc.yale.edu/.
  4. “Slavery Images,” http://slaveryimages.org/.
  5. “Freedmen and Southern Society Project – Welcome Page,” http://www.freedmen.umd.edu/.
  6. “Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection,” http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/m/mayantislavery/.
  7. Frederick Douglass National Historic Site Museum Management Program National Park Service et al., “Fredrick Douglass, Virtual Museum Exhibit and Tour,” 2008, https://www.nps.gov/museum/exhibits/frdo/index.html.
  8. “Legacy of Slavery in Maryland,” http://slavery.msa.maryland.gov/.
  9. “The Geography of Slavery in Virginia: Virginia Runaways, Slave Advertisements, Runaway Advertisements,” http://www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/gos/.
  10. “Slavery in New York,” http://www.slaveryinnewyork.org/.
  11. “Freedom on the Move | Cornell University,” http://freedomonthemove.org/.
  12. “O Say Can You See: Early Washington, D.C., Law & Family,” http://earlywashingtondc.org/.
  13. “The Revised Dred Scott Case Collection,” http://digital.wustl.edu/d/dre/.
  14. “Slaves and the Courts, 1740-1860,” http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/sthtml/sthome.html.
  15. “Visualizing Emancipation,” http://dsl.richmond.edu/emancipation/.
  16. “Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade,” http://www.slavevoyages.org/.
  17. “Lowcountry Digital History Initiative | Overview · African Passages, Lowcountry Adaptations,” http://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/africanpassageslowcountryadapt/overview.
  18. “Mining the Dispatch,” http://dsl.richmond.edu/dispatch/.
Week of September 20 — Digital Collections

Activities

  • Introduction to Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
  • Discussion of the power of structured data
  • Please RSVP for next week’s Digital Scholarship Symposium.

Homework

  • Project Proposal Due: September 23, 2016 Your proposal, which should be published on your blog, should address four key components:
    1. Your research question: “I am studying ______, because I want to find out who/how/why _______, in order to understand how/why/what ______.” Elaborate on this statement in a couple of paragraphs.
    2. A discussion of the digital methodology you think will be appropriate to work through this research question (review the discussion and sites from last week for inspiration). Again, this should take a couple of paragraphs.
    3. The 3-5 primary source repositories you will draw on to complete your project. You should develop your description of these repositories and their holdings so that a reader has a good idea of the kinds of sources and the content on which you will base your historical analysis. Don’t forget to provide a link to each of the repositories. (See the database of website reviews here if you need suggestions: http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/website-reviews.)
    4. The 4-6 best secondary sources (books and journal articles) available on your project topic. You should offer a discussion of these sources, their arguments and their importance to informing your analysis going forward. Don’t forget to offer a full bibliographical citation for each source.
Week of September 27 — Audience and Engagement

September 29 — Digital Scholarship Symposium (no class)

Activities

  • Review three approaches to collaborative public history work
  • Discussion of user-centered digital work

Homework

Week of October 4 — Digital Exhibits

Activities

Homework

  • Reflective Blog Post
  • Continue research and project work
  • Create some Omeka items related to your project topic
  • Consider an architecture for an exhibit related to your project topic
Week of October 11 — Digital Exhibits Continued

Research and project development workshopping

Activities

Homework

  • Finalize Project Contracts. Each document should include:
    • the inquiry question that the your element of the project aims to answer
    • a summary of the primary sources that will be examined
    • an annotated bibliography of key secondary sources that will inform your work work (at least five books and/or journal articles)
    • a discussion of the ways that the project will contribute to the large mission of the collaborative work
    • a detailed work plan for the project that clearly outlines the time table for research and development of the final project elements
Week of October 18 — Working with Data

Activities

Homework

  • Continue research and project work
  • Reflective Blog Post
Week of October 25 — Spatial Approaches

Activities

Homework

  • Develop some spatial work related to your project
  • Continue research and project work
  • Reflective Blog Post
Week of November 1 — Work Week (We will have class on November 1, but not on November 3)
Week of November 8 — Textual analysis

Activities

Homework

  • Develop some textual analysis related to your project topic
  • Continue research and project work
  • Reflective Blog Post
Week of November 15 — Project Meetings

November 18 — Last Day to Withdraw

Week of November 22 — Work Week (no class)

November 24 — Thanksgiving

Week of November 29 — Peer review and revision
  • Tuesday: Discussion in groups and begin Peer Review
  • Thursday: Share Peer Review outcomes with partners
  • Homework: Blog post with well-developed revision plan
Week of December 6 — Project Presentations

Final Projects Due: December 13, 2016