In 1999, historian Edward L.
Ayers observed that, "like the population at large, the historical
profession approaches the new information technologies of our day with mixed
emotions. Differences of resources, temperament, and generation create both
determined resistance and eager acceptance as well as widespread
ambivalence. While it is increasingly unusual for a historian, or any other
academic, to resist the obvious benefits of the electronic library catalog
or email, it is even more unusual for a historian to pursue the full
implications and possibilities of the new technology. The great majority of
us take a few things from the menu of possibilities and leave the rest
untouched." In this course we will take up the challenge of exploring the
menu of possibilities opened up by the internet for presenting, preserving,
and analyzing the past by thinking about how the digital era we now live in
is changing the context for doing history.
We will take several approaches
in this exploration. We will begin with an overview of the social history of
communications media, from the rise of printing to the internet, and then
introduce an analytical perspective on what a shift from printed text to
hypertext entails. We will also add some background reading in the nature of
doing history of various kinds, with an emphasis on public history, in order
to consider the relationships between professionals and the larger community
in creating historical understanding, which will provide useful perspective
on history on the internet – a new kind of public history.
With this preparation, we will begin to analyze state-of-the-art projects
in digital history, building up to three particular case studies, in which
we will compare and contrast printed versions of history with versions
created as websites: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s original text, A Midwife’s
Tale and the website based on the book at dohistory.org; a book on P.T.
Barnum and American popular culture in the 19th century, and the
cyber-recreation of Barnum’s American Museum ("The Lost Museum"); and
the effort to create a digital archive of experiences of the 9/11 tragedy,
and a book
that discusses the history of efforts to memorialize the Oklahoma city
bombing. We’ll analyze some state-of-the-art websites early in the semester
in preparation for the case studies.
The weekly workload consists of reading in terms of the assigned text and
occasional internet articles as well as exploration of internet sites (time
is also allotted during key class periods for students to focus on our case
study sites in the computer lab). Assignments consist of take-home essays
that focus on the historical background (communications history and public
history), the analysis of digital history sites, and the comparison of book
and digital versions of comparable historical material.
As a final project, students will choose an historical website for a
customized project: to conduct a small historical research project of their
own, to use as a point of comparison with other modes of communicating
history on a similar topic (print or film or museum exhibit, for example),
or to do a deeper case study analysis. I’ll provide a list of final project
ideas that students can select or modify, or, alternatively, work with
individual students to design another option.
