The Digital Past

What is Digital History? & Into to HTML

Before Class:

• Read: William Cronon, “Getting Ready to do history” pdf (pages 1-7 only)
• Read: Journal of American History’s Guidelines for doing Digital History Reviews
• Read: 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).

During Class:

• In a group, investigate three of the projects listed below.
  • What do they have in common?
  • What is different about them? What arguments do they make?
  • What sources are they based on?
  • Who created them, and who did what work? Who funded them?
  • What technologies do they use? How do they communicate?
  • How do you know you can depend on it to help with your research?
  • What do you like about it? What makes it attractive and easy to use? What makes it difficult?
• Write up your answers for at least two projects. You might want to use a Google Doc to collaborate and write the answers collaboratively.
  • You should post these answers to your blog.
• Projects for investigation:
  • Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States
  • Digital Harlem
  • Geography of the Post
  • Gulag: Many Days, Many Lives
  • Her Hat Was In the Ring
  • Histories of the National Mall
  • History Pin
  • Hurricane Digital Memory Bank
  • Language of the State of the Union, Mapping the State of the Union, and The State of the Union in Context
  • Old Bailey Online
  • September 11th Digital Archive
  • Mining the Dispatch
  • Railroads and the Making of Modern America
  • Redlining Richmond
  • Robots Reading Vogue
  • September 11 Digital Archive
  • Serendip-o-matic
  • Spread of U.S. Slavery, 1790–1860
  • Valley of the Shadow
  • Virginia Secession Convention
  • Visualizing Emancipation
  • Voting America
  • Women Writer’s Project
• Introduction to HTML
  • JSFiddle

After Class:

• If necessary, finish writing up your digital project investigations and post it to your blog. Each member of each group should post the two write ups to their blog to receive full participation credit for today.