Welcome

Welcome to the Fall 2019 semester of Doing Digital History. We have a number of goals for this semester, but the primary one is that together we will learn to use digital tools and approaches to ask and answer questions about the past. In the process, my hope as your instructor, is that you gain a confidence in learning how to learn about new tools and approaches.

Learning new methods without a specific content area on which to focus is almost impossible. As a result, I have selected the history of slavery in the United States and in Michigan as our primary area of content. We will explore this history and the digital work that has been done around it. We will also use primary sources and data sets related to slavery.

We are going to move slowly this semester, thinking always as historians, as consumers and users of digital methods. That’s a lot of things to keep in the air, and at some points the combination will seem daunting. Thus, it is really important to keep in mind that doing digital history well means making lots of mistakes along the way, and then learning from them.

This site will serve as the homebase our work. Here you will find the course schedule, the overview of the major assignments, and the logicstical details that you might need along the way.

Should you need to contact me about anything, email is always best, and I try my best to respond within 24 hours.

I’m excited about our work together, and I hope that you are, too.