HIST 210

HIST 210
The Digital Past

1. Catalog Entry

HIST 210
The Digital Past

Credit hours (3)

This course will introduce students to an era in United States History using digital methods. In addition to learning historical content, the class will cover the theory, methodologies, and tools of Digital History. Topics covered will include data ethics, clean/tidy data, data visualization, content management, sustainability, text mining, and mapping.

 

Detailed Description of Course

Students will collaboratively learn both the historical content necessary to interpret digital history projects and how to research, write, and communicate history using digital tools. Students will explore how historians use these tools to ask historical questions, investigate large collections of primary sources, turn written sources into historical data, create maps, build network illustrations, mine and analyze text, and visualize and analyze data.

Consideration is also given to methods for historical research in the digital age and ethical concerns regarding data, agency, artificial intelligence, and power inequities created in the collection and creation of historical data.

 

Detailed Description of Conduct of Course

Students can expect to learn both historical content and applicable skills in analyzing historical data. To this purpose, this class will be conducted in a hybrid seminar format which includes both lecture and discussion of the assigned readings each week. One class per week is normally reserved for in-class tutorials and workshops using digital tools.

 

Student Learning Outcomes

1. Students will practice thinking critically and analytically about historical issues, acquire a broader knowledge and deeper understanding of pertinent historical events and processes, and cultivate a familiarity with the concepts of historical argument and interpretation.
2. Students will develop disciplinary research skills by designing strategies to locate and analyze primary and secondary source evidence, processing and organizing the resultant data, and composing proper citation and bibliographical entries.
3. Students will acquire a broader knowledge and deeper understanding of key issues, themes, personalities, and events in the history of the United States.
4. Students will develop an ability to research, visualize, and communicate history using digital tools.

 

Assessment Measures

Knowledge and understanding of the material covered in this course will be measured using an array of assessment tools that may include, among other things, class attendance and participation, written examinations, formal writing assignments of various types, informal writing assignments, and classroom discussion responses. 

 

Other Course Information

Bibliograhy of readings relevant to the course: 

Jennifer Guiliano, A Primer for Teaching Digital History: Ten Design Principles (Duke University Press, 2022).

Andrej Zwitter, “Big Data Ethics,” Big Data & Society (July-September 2014): 1-6.

Ian Milligan, “Illusionary Order: Online Databases, Optical Character Recognition, and Canadian History, 1997-2010,” Canadian Historical Review 94, no. 4 (December 2013): 540-569.

Hadley Wickham, “Tidy Data”

Christof Schöch, “Big? Smart? Clean? Messy? Data in the Humanities” Journal of Digital Humanities (2013)

Sharon Leon, “The Peril and Promise of Historians as Data Creators: Perspective, Structure, and the Problem of Representation,” Journal of Slavery & Data Preservation (2023), 1-17.

Richard White, “What is Spatial History?”

Posner, “Up and Running with Omeka,” Programming Historian (2016)

Posner & Brett, “Creating Omeka Exhibits,” Programming Historian (2016)

Using Voyant, Text Analysis meets Historical Research

Amanda Gailey, “Some Big Problems with Big Data,” American Periodicals (2016), 22-24.

Anne Sarah Rubin, “Slave Streets, Free Streets Visualizing the Landscape of Early Baltimore,” Current Research in Digital History (2021)

 

Review and Approval

June 17, 2025