History 580/482

Theory and Practice of Digital History

This seminar will explore the current and potential impact of digital technologies on the research, writing, and presentation of History. The age of humanities computing was born in a meeting between Dr. Roberto Busa and IBM’s Thomas Watson, Sr. in 1949. Over the course of decades, with significant investment from IBM, Busa created the Index Thomisticas. Humanities computing has, since Busa’s innovations, remained on the relative margins of our disciplines, including History. But that is changing, and quickly. What once took years with punch cards and magnetic tape can now be accomplished in months with a scanner, OCR, and desktop computer. Many of the research and writing tasks that historians once managed by hand have been moved to the computer. In such cases, computer technology has simply sped up and expanded the scale of what historians have traditionally done by hand.

But what might we gain if we begin to use the computer to do something that only it can do? What could we discover if we read every book published in the nineteenth century? What would we learn if we could visually break down and compare the language in decades of newspapers from various regions of the United States? How would it change our understanding of criminals records if we laid them out in geographical space? Does History change if one’s archives are born digital?

In this course we will consider these questions as we explore the nascent field of Digital History (DH). Through readings and various projects, we will familiarize ourselves with the concepts, tools, and debates of and within DH. In teams, undergraduate and graduate students in this seminar will work together to construct a Digital History project. We will be part lab, part discussion seminar, and will learn by doing as much as by talking.