This course teaches students to use digital tools and methods to discover new insights about early American history. We will focus on people, events, and sources from the colonial era, the American Revolution, and the
early American Republic. The class will prioritize doing history—teaching the fundamentals of digital technology by applying them to practical historical problems. Over the course of the semester, students will learn how to find, use, verify, interpret, and analyze historical primary sources online, while also putting them in context with secondary scholarly sources. Students will also discover how digital tools can be used to ask new questions, build historical arguments, analyze datasets, create visualizations, construct digital maps, and present visual and textural work effectively online. By completing a series of small digital projects— culminating in an online visualization essay at the end of the semester—students will gain valuable digital and historical thinking skills and a greater understanding of the early American past.
In this course you will:
- Learn the history of early America and examine how it connects to our lives today.
- Practice historical thinking skills, including close reading, sourcing, contextualization, corroboration, and reading silences.
- Develop digital literacies, including how to access, use, understand, evaluate and create information through digital platforms.
- Create historical scholarship using digital tools and resources, and present this work effectively online.
This course also fulfills the following SMU Common Curriculum requirements:
