This schedule, like the rest of the syllabus, is a living document and is subject to change. I will update the schedule with specific readings and assignment details as we go.
Week 1
Wednesday January 17 – Introductions
In class:
• Join class Poll Everywhere
• Join class Slack
• Complete Course Survey
Friday January 19 – Defining Digital History
Before class:
• Review syllabus. Questions?
• Sheila Brennan, “Digital History,” June 4, 2019.
• Dan Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig, “Introduction: Promises and Perils of Digital History” in Digital History, Center for History and New Media, 2005.
Week 2 (Assignment: Setting Up Your Website)
Monday January 22 – Colliding Cultures in the New World
Before class:
• American Yawp, Ch. 1, sections I. Introduction, and II. The First Americans
• Megan O’Neil, “Confronting the Myth of the ‘Digital Native’,” Chronicle of Higher Education, April 21, 2014. (Posted in Canvas)
• Miriam Posner, Stewart Varner, and Brian Coxall, “Creating Your Web Presence,” Chronicle of Higher Education, February 14, 2011. (Posted in Canvas)
After class:
• Assignment: Set up your website, due Sunday January 28 at midnight
Wednesday January 24 – The Internet: History
Before class:
• Dan Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig, “Getting Started” in Digital History, Center for History and New Media, 2005.
• Video: History of the Internet
Friday January 26 – The Internet: How It Works
Before Class:
• Video: The Internet: Packets, Routing & Reliability
In Class:
• Writing with HTML
• Video: Most Popular Desktop Browsers 1993 – 2022
Week 3 (Individual Meetings about Final Project)
Monday January 29 – Searching and Security
Before Class:
• “How Google perfected the web,” The Verge, January 8, 2024
• Wikipedia, “List of the most common passwords”
• “How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking,” Wired, August 6, 2012 (Posted in Canvas)
In Class:
• Quiz: Pew Research Center, “How Much Do You Know About Cybersecurity?” (March 22, 2017)
After class:
• Assignment: Individual Meeting about Final Project, must be completed between Monday January 29 and Friday February 2
Wednesday January 31 – Digitization, Transcription and OCR
Before Class:
• Dan Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig, “Becoming Digital,” in Digital History, Center for History and New Media, 2005.
• Helen Thompson, “The Smithsonian Wants You! (To Help Transcribe Its Collections),” August 12, 2014.
• Ryan Cordell, “Why You (A Humanist) Should Care About Optical Character Recognition,” January 10, 2019.
Friday February 2 – Digital Preservation and Sustainability
Before Class:
• Dan Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig, “Preserving Digital History,” in Digital History, Center for History and New Media, 2005.
• Library of Congress, “Sustainability of Digital Formats,” Introduction and Sustainability Factors
• Jennifer Howard, “Born Digital, Projects Need Attention to Survive,” Chronicle of Higher Education, January 6, 2014. (Posted in Canvas)
In Class:
• Internet Archive, WayBack Machine
Week 4 (Digital History Project Review)
Monday February 5 – Indigenous Early America
Guest Speaker: Dr. Zachary Conn, SMU
After class:
• Assignment: Digital History Project Review, Part 1 due Tuesday 2/6 at midnight, Part 2 due Friday 2/9 at midnight.
Wednesday February 7 – Violence and Race
Before Class:
• American Yawp, Ch. 3, sections I. Introduction; II. Slavery and the Making of Race; V. Riot, Rebellion, and Revolt
Friday February 9 – Text Analysis
Guest Speaker: Rafia Mirza, Research Librarian for Digital Scholarship, SMU
Before Class:
• Cameron Blevins, “Topic Modeling Martha Ballard’s Diary,” April 1, 2010
• First 3 sections (Introduction, Methods, Results & Analysis) in Joshua Catalano and Briana Pocratsky, “What’s on History? Tuning In to Conspiracies, Capitalism, and Masculinity,” Current Research in Digital History 3 (28 October 2020).
• Sections I.1-2, II. 1-6 in Ted Underwood, “Where to Start with Text Mining,” The Stone and the Shell, August 14, 2012.
In Class:
• Google Books Ngram Viewer
• Voyant: Readex African American Periodicals
Week 5 (Primary and Secondary Sources Blog)
Monday February 12 – International Slave Trade
Before Class:
• Sign up for account with Zotero
• American Yawp, Ch. 4, section III. Slavery, Anti-Slavery and Atlantic Exchange
• Primary Source: Olaudah Equiano Describes the Middle Passage, 1789
• Image: Print of the slave ship Brookes, 1789
• Project: Explore the Trans-Atlantic portion of Slave Voyages. Specifically look at The Enslavement of Africans, Timeline and Chronology, Methodology: Introduction and Database.
Wednesday February 14 – Digital Sources
In Class:
• Guest Speaker: Pam Pagels, Research Librarian, SMU
• History Research Guide
After Class:
• Assignment: Primary and secondary sources blog, due Tuesday February 20 Thursday February 22 at midnight.
Friday February 16 – Slavery
Before Class:
• Alan Taylor, American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2016. Ch. 1, Section Americas, pg. 13–23. (Canvas)
• Covart, Liz, host. “Episode 170: Wendy Warren, New England Bound: Slavery in Early New England.” Ben Franklin’s World (podcast). January 23, 2018. Listen to sections 7:00-10:12 and 13:00-14:57.
Week 6 (Preparing for the Midterm Assignment)
Monday February 19 – Consumption and Trade
Before Class:
• American Yawp, Ch. 4, section II. Consumption and Trade in the British Atlantic
• Taylor, American Revolutions. Ch. 1, Section Commerce, pg. 23-26. (Canvas)
• Ann Smart Martin, Buying into the World of Goods: Early Consumers in Backcountry Virginia, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. pg. 1–10, 36–41, and 173–186. (E-book access through SMU Libraries)
Wednesday February 21 – Metadata
Before Class:
• Video: What is metadata? (and why does it matter?)
After Class:
• Assignment: Preparing for the Midterm, due Tuesday February 27 at midnight.
Friday February 23 – Colonial Society
Before Class:
• American Yawp, Ch. 4, section IV. Pursuing Political, Religious and Individual Freedom
• Taylor, American Revolutions. Ch. 1, Sections Coverture and Faiths. pg. 27–31. (Canvas)
Week 7
Monday February 26 – Colonial Conflict
Before Class:
• American Yawp, Ch. 4, section V. Seven Years’ War, and section VI. Pontiac’s War
Wednesday February 28 – Copyright and AI
Before Class:
• Dan Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig, “Owning the Past,” in Digital History, Center for History and New Media, 2005.
• Video: Copyright Basics
• University of Wisconsin-Madison Writing Center, “Quoting and Paraphrasing.”
• Josh Dzieza, “How AI can make history,” The Verge, February 15, 2024.
Friday March 1 – Prelude to Revolution
Before Class:
• American Yawp, Ch. 5, sections I. Introduction, II. The Origins of the American Revolution and III. The Causes of the American Revolution
Week 8
Monday March 4 – Study for Midterm: NO CLASS
Tuesday March 5 – Optional Study Session for Midterm
Wednesday March 6 – Midterm Exam
Friday March 8 – Historical Thinking: NO CLASS
Historical Thinking Take Home Assignment, due Monday March 18th at 11am.
NO CLASS – Spring Break (March 11, 13, 15)
Week 9 (Dataset Assignment and Blog)
Monday March 18 – Independence
Before Class:
• American Yawp, Ch. 5, section IV. Independence, V. The War for Independence, VI. The Consequences of the American Revolution, VII. Conclusion
• Primary Source: Virginia Declaration of Rights, 1776
Wednesday March 20 – Spreadsheet and Databases, Part 1
Before Class:
• Sign up for a Google account (if you don’t already have one) so that you have access to Google Sheets.
• Mattia Viale, “From the historical source to a database: a short story,” November 21, 2018, Refashioning the Renaissance (blog).
• Robert Kosara, “Spreadsheet Thinking vs Database Thinking,” April 24, 2016.
• Slave Voyages: Methodology, Variable List and Database.
Friday March 22 – Spreadsheet and Databases, Part 2
Before Class:
• Sign up for the basic level (free) Airtable account. Make sure to use your smu.edu email when you sign up.
• Stephen Ramsay, “Databases,” in A Companion to Digital Humanities, ed. Susan Schriebman, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth.
• Video: Database Tutorial for Beginners, 0:13-3:06.
• Airtable, Setting Up Field Types.
• Airtable, A Beginners Guide to many-to-many relationships.
• Airtable, Linking Between Tables
After class:
• Assignment: Dataset Assignment and Blog, Part 1 due Tuesday 3/26 at midnight, Part 2 due Thursday 3/28 at midnight.
Week 10
Monday March 25 – Evaluating Sources and Visualizations
Before Class:
• UC Berkeley Library, “Evaluating web pages.”
• Video: “Who Can You Trust? Crash Course Navigating Digital Information.”
• Abby Mullen, “Visualizations.” (posted in Slack)
Wednesday March 27 – Revolution(s) Continue
Before Class:
• American Yawp, Ch. 6, section II. Shays’ Rebellion, section VII. The Whiskey Rebellion and Jay’s Treaty, and section VIII. The French Revolution and the Limits of Liberty
Friday March 29 – Good Friday: NO CLASS
Week 11 (Visualization Assignment and Blog)
Monday April 1 – Visualizations, Part 1
Before Class:
• John Theibault, “Visualizations and Historical Arguments” in Writing History in the Digital Age, ed. Kristen Nawrotzki and Jack Dougherty.
In Class:
• Workshop for Timeline.JS
After Class:
• Assignment: Visualization assignment, Part 1 due Thursday 4/4 at midnight, Part 2 due Tuesday 4/9 Thursday 4/11 at midnight.
Wednesday April 3 – Visualizations, Part 2
Before Class:
• Sign up for a Tableau Public account (in-browser) or Tableau Student account (desktop) using your SMU information.
• Joshua Catalano, “Digitally Analyzing the Uneven Ground: Language Borrowing Among Indian Treaties,” Current Research in Digital History 1 (2018).
• Caroline Winterer, “Where is America in the Republic of Letters?,” Modern Intellectual History 9, no. 3 (2012). Read pages 597–615.
Friday April 5 – Eclipses in Early America
In Class:
• Tableau Workshop
Week 12 (Spatial History/Early Politics Blog)
Monday April 8 – Solar Eclipse: NO CLASS
Wednesday April 10 – Politics in the New Republic
Before Class:
• American Yawp, Ch. 6, section III. The Constitutional Convention, section IV. Ratifying the Constitution, section V. Rights and Compromises, and section X. The Election of 1800
• Rosemarie Zagarri, “What Did Democracy Look Like? Voting in Early America” and “Political Parties in the Early Republic.” Mapping Early American Elections, 2017-2019.
• Project to Explore: Mapping Early American Elections
After Class:
• Assignment: Spatial History/Early Politics Blog due Tuesday 4/16 at midnight.
Friday April 12 – Mapping and GIS, Part 1
Before Class:
• Richard White, “What is Spatial History?”, 2010.
• Todd Presner and David Shepard, “Mapping the Geospatial Turn,” In A New Companion to Digital Humanities, edited by Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth (Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2015), 247-256.
Week 13 (Mapping/GIS Assignment and Blog)
Monday April 15 – Mapping and GIS, Part 2
Before Class:
• Tim Hitchcock, “Place and the Politics of the Past,” Historyonics (July 11, 2012).
• Projects (explore at least 2): Creating the American South, 1790-1860, Photogrammer, Canals: 1820-1890, Forced Migration. Think about how these projects are using maps for analysis and presentation.
In Class:
• Lincoln Mullen, “Georectification” from “Spatial Humanities Workshop.”
After Class:
• GIS Assignment, Part 1 due Thursday 4/18 at midnight, Part 2 due Tuesday 4/23 at midnight.
Wednesday April 17 – Mapping and GIS, Part 3
In Class:
• ArcGIS Online Workshop
Friday April 19 – Programing
Before Class:
• Video: Intro to Scratch
• Explore: Scratch
• Practice: Blockly Maze
In Class:
• Create a simple project in Scratch using one of their tutorials
Week 14 (Final Project)
Monday April 22 – Early American Republic
Before Class:
• American Yawp, Ch. 7 section III. Jeffersonian Republicanism, section IV. Jefferson as President, and section V. Native American Power and the United States
After Class:
• Final Project, due due 5/2 at 11:30am
• Final Project Presentation, 4/26, 4/29, 5/2. Sign up link in Slack.
Wednesday April 24 – War of 1812
Before Class:
•American Yawp, Ch. 7 section VI. The War of 1812
• Video: Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812, 4:20-21:00 and 32:52-35:30
• Video: The Burning of Washington, D.C.
Friday April 26 – Early American History Wrap Up, Final Project Presentations
After Class:
• Post-Course Survey: Link in Slack, due 5/2 at 11:30am
Week 15 (Final Project)
Monday April 29 – Podcasting, Final Project Presentations
Before Class:
• Select one episode of the Ben Franklin’s World podcast that corresponds to the topic you have selected for your final project. Listen to it and take notes. Be ready to answer this reflection prompt about the podcast you selected: What was the episode about and what was the most important thing you learned about your topic?
Tuesday April 30 – NO CLASS
Thursday May 2 – Final Project
• Final Exam Period: 11:30am–2:30pm
• Final project due 5/2 at 11:30am
• Final Project Presentations
