Schedule

Week Number: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16

Week 1

Mon. Aug 27. Course Introduction.

After Class:

Purchase a Student Plan ($30) from Reclaim Hosting
Take the Student Technology Survey

Wed. Aug 29. Building a Web Presence.

Reading:

Megan O’Neil, “Confronting the Myth of the ‘Digital Native’,” Chronicle of Higher Education, April 21, 2014.
Miriam Posner, Stewart Varner, and Brian Coxall, “Creating Your Web Presence,” ProfHacker, February 14, 2011.
Ryan Cordell, “Creating and Maintaining a Professional Presence Online,” ProfHacker, October 3, 2012.

After Class:

Write a “Hello World” blog post that introduces yourself to the class. Discuss how you chose to set up your blog and your approach to building a digital identity for yourself. Due before the start of class on September 5th
Submit the URL to your blog via the assignment submission form.

Week 2

Mon. Sept 3. Labor Day - No Class.

Wed. Sept 5. What is Digital History?

Readings:

Miram Posner, “How Did They Make That?,” August 29, 2013. Click through to all the projects listed.
Dan Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig, “Introduction: Promises and Perils of Digital History” and “Getting Started,” in Digital History, online edition (Center for History and New Media, 2005).

Week 3

Mon. Sept 10. Evaluating History Online.

After Class:

Assignment: Write a blog post that reviews one of the Digital History projects listed below. You may wish to consult the Organization of American Historian’s guidelines for reviewing digital history projects.
Due before the start of class September 17th. Submit a link to your blog post through the assignment submission form.

Projects for Review:

Wed. Sept 12. Who were the Progressives?

Reading:

The American Yawp, Chapter 20

Week 4

Mon. Sept 17. Copyright & Fair Use.

Reading:

Cory Doctorow, “We’ll Probably Never Free Mickey, But That’s Beside the Point.” Electronic Frontier Foundation (2016)
Corynne McSherry, “Court Upholds Legality of Google Books: Tremendous Victory for Fair Use and the Public Interest,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, November 14, 2013.
Dan Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig, “Owning the Past,” in Digital History.
George Mason Copyright Office, sections on copyright and fair use.

Wed. Sept 19. Working with Primary Sources in the Digital Age.

Readings:

Sam Wineburg, “Thinking Like a Historian,” Teaching with Primary Sources Quarterly 3, 1 (Winter 2010).
Basics of Visual Literacy, University of Maryland
Assignment: Find five (5) primary sources from at least 3 different collections. Write a blog post that cites the items (including the databases they came from) in Chicago format. Summarize each source and discuss what you learned by reading it. What did you learn about searching for and finding primary sources on the internet? Due before the start of class September 24th.

Week 5

Mon. Sept 24th. Secondary Sources & History of the Internet.

Reading:

Caleb McDaniel, “How to Read for History”
Roy Rosenzweig, “Can History Be Open Source: Wikipedia and the Future of the Past,” Journal of American History 93, 1 (2006).

After Class:

Assignment: Using the resources from class find a monograph and a journal article related to some aspect of the Progressive Era. In a blog post summarize the argument for each. Be sure to include citations for each in Chicago format. Due before the start of class October 1st.

Wed. Sept 25. The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.

Reading: (in order)

Rose Cohen, “My First Job”
Clara Lemlich, “Life in the Shop”
William Shepherd, Eyewitness at the Triangle
Echoes from the Triangle Fire. Dr. Price Suggests Co-operation Between the Waist Makers’ Union and the Board of Sanitary Control. Ladies’ Garment Worker, September, 1911. p.6.
Richard A. Greenwlad. “The Burning Building at 23 Washington Place”: The Triangle Fire, Workers and Reformers in Progressive Era New York.” New York History 83, no. 1 (2002): 55-91.

Week 6

Mon. Oct 1. Omeka Metadata.

Reading:

Guide to Creating Omeka Exhibits, The Albert Greenfield Digital Center for The History of Women’s Education.
Miriam Posner, Up and Running with Omeka, The Programming Historian (2013).
Explore Dublin Core, “Metadata Basics.”
Look at and familiarize yourself with the following exhibits:
- The NAACP in Texas exhibit
- The Athletics and Physical Education at Bryn Mawr College, 1885-1929 exhibit

After class:

Skill Assignment #1: Using the primary sources that you gathered during last week create an Omeka collection of at least 5 primary sources. Each item should have complete metadata although not every Dublin Core field needs to be filled out. Be sure to include a reference to where you found the item and a rights statement if appropriate. Due before the start of class October 10th via the assignment submission form

Wed. Oct 3. Omeka Exhibits.

Reading:

Exhibit Builder Tutorial

After Class:

Skill Assignment #2: Using the items you added to Omeka last class, build an exhibit that tells a coherent story about some aspect of Progressive Era history. Each exhibit should include 5 items with proper metadata and an image. Use prose to link these items together. Your exhibit should be between 400 and 750 words and structured/organized in a way that is suitable to the content. All secondary sources used to contextualize the items should be cited using Chicago format. Due before the start of class Monday October 15th

Week 7

Tues. Oct 9. Reform & Legislation in Progressive Era America.

Fall Break is October 8th. Monday classes meet Tuesday instead. Tuesday classes do not meet this week.

Reading:

Excerpt from McGerr, Michael E. “Chapter 3: Transforming Americans” in A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870 - 1920. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives
Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, Chapter 10

Wed. Oct 10. Creating Timelines with Timeline JS.

Before Class:

After Class:

Skill Assignment #3: Over the course of this semester make a timeline that chronicles important developments in the Progressive Era. You should have roughly 20 events including major labor strikes, social movements, and legislative accomplishments. Events can be drawn from class lectures, readings, and research but each event’s entry must include an accurate date, a several sentence description, links to more information where relevant, and an image if possible. This assignment, unlike most skills assignments, is due December 17th by 10am.

Week 8

Mon. Oct 15. The Suffrage Movement.

Reading:

Excerpt, “Power and Politics: Women in the Progressive Era, 1900-1920” in DuBois, Ellen Carol, and Lynn Dumenil. Through Women’s Eyes: An American History with Documents. 2nd ed, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009.

In Class:

Databases
Skill Assignment #4

Wed. Oct 17. Databases: Part I.

Before Class:

Reading:

“Spreadsheet Thinking vs Database Thinking”
Mark Merry, “Designing Databases for Historical Research,” especially part D.
Lev Manovich, “Database as a Genre of New Media,” AI & Society 14 (2000)

After Class:

Work on Skill Assignment #4

Week 9

Mon. Oct 22. Databases: Part II.

Reading:

Airtable, Setting Up Field Types
Airtable, A Beginners Guide to many-to-many relationships
Airtable, Linking Between Tables

After Class:

Skill Assignment #4 – Due before the start of class Monday, October 29th.

Wed. Oct 24. Midterm.

Study Guide

Week 10

Mon. Oct 29. Segregation & Urbanization.

Reading:

Excerpt from McGerr, Michael E. A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870 - 1920. 2005.

Wed. Oct 31. Spatial History & Map Warper.

Reading:

Richard White, “What is Spatial History?”
Edward L. Ayers & Scott Nesbit, “Seeing Emancipation: Scale and Freedom in the American South,” Journal of the Civil War Era, Vol 1 No 1 (2011): 3-24.
- Explore: Visualizing Emancipation
Lincoln Mullen, “Data Maps,”

Week 11

Mon. Nov. 5. Jim Crow & Segregation

Reading:

Mark S. Foster, “In the Face of ‘Jim Crow’: Prosperous Blacks and Vacations, Travel and Outdoor Leisure, 1890-1945”, The Journal of Negro History, vol. 84, no. 2, Apr. 1999, pp. 130–49. Crossref, doi:10.²³⁰⁷⁄_2649043.

Wed. Nov 7. Mapping with Keppler.gl

Reading:

Keppler.gl User Guide
Familiarize yourself with The Negro Motorist Green-Book](https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/dc858e50-83d3-0132-2266-58d385a7b928/book#page/1/mode/2up)

After Class:

Skill Assignment #5 (Due before the start of class on November 12th.)

Week 12

Mon. Nov 12. Women & the City

Reading:

Maureen A. Flanagan, “Gender and Urban Political Reform: The City Club and the Woman’s City Club of Chicago in the Progressive Era” in The American Historical Review

Wed. Nov 14. Text Mining

Reading:

Ted Underwood, “Where to Start with Text Mining,” The Stone and the Shell, August 14, 2012.
Ted Underwood, “Seven Ways Humanists are Using Computers to Understand Text,” The Stone and the Shell, June 4, 2015.
Dan Cohen, “Searching for the Victorians,” October 4, 2010.
Explore: Cameron Blevins, “Topic Modeling Martha Ballard’s Diary”
Experiment with:
- Google Books Ngram Viewer
- Bookworm

After Class:

Skill Assignment #6 (Due before the start of class November 26th.)

Week 13

Mon. Nov 19. No class.

Wed. Nov 21. Thanksgiving break - no class.

Week 14

Mon. Nov 26. Immigration.

Reading:

Excerpts from Roger Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy Since 1882 (pdf)

Wed. Nov 28. Visualizations.

Reading:

John Theibault, “Visualizations and Historical Arguments,” in Writing History in the Digital Age, edited by Kristen Nawrotzki and Jack Dougherty (University of Michigan Press, 2013).
Explore the visualizations created by Mike Bostock.

Before Class:

After Class:

Skill Assignment #7 Due before the start of class December 3rd.
Digital Past Tool Survey

Week 15

Mon. Dec 3. Security and Sustainability.

Reading:

Dan Goodin, “Why passwords have never been weaker,” Ars Technica, August 20, 2012.
Mat Honan, “How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking,” Wired, August 6, 2012.
Mat Honan, “How I Resurrected My Digital Life After an Epic Hacking,” Wired, August 17, 2012.
Jennifer Howard, “Born Digital, Projects Need Attention to Survive,” Chronicle of Higher Education, January 6, 2014.
Dan Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig, “Preserving Digital History,” in Digital History (2006).

After Class:

Assignment: Choose one of the two following topics and write a blog post:
- Topic 1: How sustainable is the digital work that you have don’t in this course? What would it take to sustain the assignments you have completed? Which assignments can you export from the web services where you created them?
- Topic 2: How secure is your digital life? Who has access to your information? What kinds of things might hackers, corporations, political parties, or states be able to figure out about you from that information? What is the significance of government surveillance? What can you do to improve your digital security?
- Due December 17th by 10am.

Wed. Dec 5. Algorithms and Ethics.

Reading:

Kieran Healy, “Using Metadata to Find Paul Revere,” June 9, 2013.
Safiya Noble, “A Society, Searching” excerpt from Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism.

Week 16

Mon. Dec 17th. Final Assignments Due by 10am.

No Final Exam.
Skill Assignment #8: Use your website for the course to create a portfolio of all your work in this class.
- Your portfolio should be a page on your website that links to all of the assignments and blog posts you have completed for this class.
- Include images of the assignments where appropriate and be sure to make the site attractive.
- With each skill assignment include a short discussion about how the assignment contributed to your understanding of the Progressive Era and Digital History. The text on this page should be between 500 and 700 words.
- Your portfolio is due December 17th by 10am.