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

All reading should be completed prior to the class for which it is listed.

Week 1

Tues. Jan 22. Course Introduction.

After Class:

• Purchase a Student Plan ($30) from Reclaim Hosting. Think carefully about the domain name you choose. How do you want to represent yourself online?
• Take the Student Technology Survey
• Sign up for a Blog Discussion Group:
  • Section 02
  • Section 04

Thurs. Jan 24. Digital Identities and 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:

• Finish setting up your blog. Think carefully about how you want to portray yourself online.
• Blog 1

Week 2

Tues. Jan 29. 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).

Thurs. Jan 31. Evaluating History Online.

After Class:

• Blog 2

Week 3

Tues. Feb 5. Who were the Progressives?

Eric Gonzaba will guest lecture today.

Reading:

• The American Yawp, Chapter 20

Thurs. Feb 7. Primary Sources in the Digital Age.

Reading:

• Sam Wineburg, “Thinking Like a Historian,” Teaching with Primary Sources Quarterly 3, 1 (Winter 2010).
• Basics of Visual Literacy, University of Maryland

After Class:

• Blog 3

Week 4

Tues. Feb 12. Labor & Leisure.

See slack channel for password to access readings through dropbox.

• Excerpt from Steven J. Ross, “Working Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America.” (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1998). (pdf)
• “A Thrill Per Minute at the Moving-Picture Show,” Baltimore Sun, April 9, 1911. (GMU login required).
• “Life in Motion Pictures,” The Baltimore Sun, March 16, 1910. (GMU login required).
• “The Nickel Theater Menace,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 26, 1908. (GMU login required.)

Thurs. Feb 14. Copyright and 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.

Week 5

Tues. Feb 19. 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.

After Class

• Blog 4

Thurs. Feb 21. Omeka Part 1: 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. Due March 5th prior to the start of class.

Week 6

Tues. Feb 26. Omeka Part 2: Exhibits.

Reading:

• Exhibit Builder Tutorial

• Skill Assignment #2. Due March 5th prior to the start of class.

Thurs. Feb 28. Reform and Legislation in the Progressive Era.

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

Week 7

Tues. March 5. Timelines.

Before Class:

• Sign up for a Google account if you don’t already have one.
• Explore the Timeline.js website. Look at a few of the examples and watch the overview video on the home page.

Thurs. March 7.

• No Class
• Take Home Midterm due through Blackboard by 11:59pm on Sunday March 10th.
  • Midterm study guide.

Week 8

Tues. March 12 and Thurs. March 14.

Enjoy your Spring Break!

Week 9

Tues. March 19. Timelines. 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.
  • (Pay particular attention to the blue pages at the end of this chapter that discuss the ways that Suffragists occupied public space to advocate for their cause.)

In Class:

• Timeline.js

After Class:

• Skill Assignment #3. Due May 9th by 10am.

Thurs. March 21. Databases: Part 1.

Before Class:

• Sign up for AirTable

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 10

Tues. March 26. Databases: Part 2.

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 Tuesday April 2nd.

Thurs. March 28. Segregation and Urbanization.

Reading:

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

After Class:

• Blog 5 Canceled.
• Assignment: Find a historical map and bring it to class on Tuesday, April 2nd. See the slack channel for resources.

Week 11

Tues. April 2. 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,”

Thurs. April 4. 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.

After Class:

• Blog 6

Week 12

Tues. April 9. Mapping with Keppler.gl.

Reading:

• Keppler.gl User Guide
• Play with Keppler.gl
• Familiarize yourself with The Negro Motorist Green-Book

After Class:

• Skill Assignment #5. Due before the start of class on April 18th.

Thurs. April 11. 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

Week 13

Tues. April 16. No Class.

Thurs. April 18. 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 on April 25th.

Week 14

Tues. April 23. Immigration.

Reading:

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

Thurs. April 25. 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.

• Sign up for Plot.ly

After Class:

• Skill Assignment #7. Due before the start of class on May 2nd.

Week 15

Tues. April 30. 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:

• Blog 7 (Extra Credit)

Thurs. May 2. Machine Learning, Data Collection, and Algorithms of Oppression.

• 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.

After Class:

• Blog 8

Week 16

Thurs. May 9th.

• No final exam.
• Portfolios and Reflections (skill #8) due by 10am.
• Timelines (skill 3) due by 10am.