Schedule of Readings & Assignments

1. Introductions

- what's going on in this class?
- past v. history v. heritage
- why study history?

T: What you’ve signed up for…

Today we spend most of the time looking at the aims of the course, topics on the syllabus, course expectations, etc..

Th: Stories and forms of history

• Jenkins, Keith. Re-thinking History, Chapter 1: What history is, pp. 6–32.
• Cronon, William. “A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative.” Journal of American History 78, no. 4 (1992): 1347–76.

2. Archives and Algorithms

- how algorithms are transforming archival practices
- how history and heritage are increasingly shaped by algorithms
- how present archives represent the future of history
- how archived-marginalized communities are creating new kinds of archives

T: The power of archives

• Schwartz, Joan M. and Terry Cook. “Archives, Records and Power: The Making of Modern Memory,” 1–19.
• Putnam, Lara. “The Transnational and the Text-Searchable: Digitized Sources and the Shadows They Cast: The Transnational and the Text-Searchable.” The American Historical Review 121, no. 2 (2016): 377–402.
• Christen, Kimberly. “Tribal Archives, Traditional Knowledge, and Local Contexts: Why the ‘s’ Matters,” 2015.

Th: Community Archives

• Duarte, Marisa Elena and Miranda Belarde-Lewis, “Imagining: Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies,” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 53, no. 5–6 (July 2015): 677–702. Read through 691 and skim the rest.
• Guiliano, Jennifer, and Carolyn Heitman. “Difficult Heritage and the Complexities of Indigenous Data.” Journal of Cultural Analytics 4, no. 1 (August 2019).

• Caswell, Michelle. “Seeing Yourself in History: Community Archives and the Fight Against Symbolic Annihilation,” The Public Historian 36, no. 4 (2014): 26–37.

• Community Webs
• SAADA
• After Violence
• Genoa Indian School

3. Digital archives -> Computational history

- historic data sets
- machine learning and data classification in digital archives
- energizing archives

T: Interfacing the Archive

• Hedstrom, Margaret. “Archives, Memory, and Interfaces with the Past,” 21–43.
• Presner, Todd. “8. The Ethics of the Algorithm: Close and Distant Listening to the Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive.” In Probing the Ethics of Holocaust Culture, 167–202. Harvard University Press, 2016.
  • Also see the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive
• Whitelaw, Mitchell. Generous Interfaces for Digital Cultural Collections
• Gibbs, Fred. New Forms of History: Critiquing Data and Its Representations, American Historian 7 (2016): 31-36.

Sample Digital Archive/History projects

American Panorama, Valley of the Shadow, American Social Movements, Slave Voyages, Civil War Washington, Blue Ridge Parkway, Colonial Dispatches, Colored Conventions, Lynching America, Mapping Segregation, Native Land, First Days Project, American Yawp

Early efforts

Valley of the Shadow, Virtual Jamestown, Documenting the American South

Th: Computing the Archive

• Willson, Michele. “Algorithms (and the) Everyday.” Information, Communication & Society 20.1 (2017): 137–50.
• Goldstone, Andrew, and Ted Underwood. “The Quiet Transformations of Literary Studies: What Thirteenth Thousand Scholars Could Tell Us.” In New Literary History, 1–30, 2014.
• Donovan, Moira. “How AI Is Helping Historians Better Understand Our Past”. MIT Technology Review (April 11, 2023).
• Jaillant, Lise, and Arran Rees. “Applying AI to Digital Archives: Trust, Collaboration and Shared Professional Ethics”. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 38 (2023): 571–85.

Extra

• Crane, Tom. “Beyond the Viewer: Fragments and Links in Annotation Space”. Digirati-Ch, June 2018.

4. Engaging History

- how have FORMS of history kept pace with information technology change?
- what should history look like?
- how can campus histories come alive?

T: Digital Storytelling

• Hurley, Andrew. “Chasing the Frontiers of Digital Technology: Public History Meets the Digital Divide,” The Public Historian 38, no. 1 (2016): 69–88.
• Wyman, Bruce et al., “Digital Storytelling in Museums: Observations and Best Practices,” Curator: The Museum Journal 54, no. 4 (2011): 461–68.
• Quimby, Claire. Digital Catalogues Study: A Cross-Institutional User Study of Online Museum Collection Catalogues Art Institute of Chicago, November 2019.
• Read the Key Findings section, and the 3 short sections in the “Functionality and Design” section.

Engagement (browse a little, have something to say…)

• Digital Community Engagement
• Cifor, Marika, Michelle Caswell, Alda Allina Migoni, and Noah Geraci. “‘What We Do Crosses over to Activism’: The Politics and Practice of Community Archives.” The Public Historian 40.2 (2018): 69–95.
• Hausknecht, Simone, Shannon Freeman, Jenny Martin, Carrie Nash, and Kelly Skinner. “Sharing Indigenous Knowledge through Intergenerational Digital Storytelling: Design of a Workshop Engaging Elders and Youth.” Educational Gerontology 47, no. 7 (July 2021): 285–96.
• Zavala, Jimmy, et al., “‘A Process Where We’re All at the Table’: Community Archives Challenging Dominant Modes of Archival Practice.,” Archives and Manuscripts 45, no. 3 (2017): 202–15.

Th: Campus History Collaboration

• why collaborative history?
• does UNM history matter?
• what if buildings could talk?
• maybe Everything is Alive

Campus Histories

• UNM Campus Histories
• UW Center for Campus History
• UM Heritage Project
• Names in Brick and Stone
• USSC Campus History

5. Digital artifacts

- what good are digital scans of historical artefacts?
- when does a technology become worth it (and what is _it_?)

T: 3D and digital twins

Everyone

• Sydell, Laura. 3D Scans Help Preserve History, But Who Should Own Them?
  • Bagan
  • Open Heritage 3D
• Scan the World
• Kinda what we’re doing
• Ancient Food Molds

Pick 2

• Liang, Jiafang. “Mixing Worlds: Current Trends in Integrating the Past and Present through Augmented and Mixed Reality.” Advances in Archaeological Practice 9, no. 3 (2021): 250–56.
• Barilotti, Alyssa. “Will the Digital Do? Exploring the Role of 3D Technologies in Repatriation Negotiations,” (2022).
• DeHass, Medeia Krisztina Csoba, and Alexandra Taitt. “3D Technology in Collaborative Heritage Preservation.” Museum Anthropology Review 12.2 (2018): 120–52.
• Cameron, Fiona. “3 Beyond the Cult of the Replicant: Museums and Historical Digital Objects—Traditional Concerns, New Discourses”

Extra:

• Immersive Pedagogy: Developing a Decolonial and Collaborative Framework for Teaching and Learning in 3D/VR/AR.
• Muenster, Sander. “Digital 3D Technologies for Humanities Research and Education: An Overview.” Applied Sciences 12, no. 5 (January 2022): 2426.

Th: Work time

• No class in Ortega, but you should be working on your campus history project
• I will be in the studio (MVH 2068) from 1-3:30 if you want any help
• Please come and work even if you don’t have specific questions!
• Stuff you need to do and should make progress on this week:
  • Campus history research in CSWR
  • Create GitHub and SketchFab accounts. This are required for finishing the campus history project
  • Get your campus history copy working
  • Scan something either in the lab with the scanner or via your phone and RealityScan (scans are due in 2 weeks!)
    • Consult the 3D scan guidlines
  • Start writing out what your soundbite is going to be, and experiment with recording (soundbites are due in 2 weeks!)

6. Historical Reconstructions and Simulations

- theory and practice of reconstruction
- historical authenticity
- heritage, generally 

T: Historic Site Reconstruction

• Sanders, Donald H. “Virtual Heritage: Researching and Visualizing the Past in 3D.” Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies 2, no. 1 (2014): 30–47.
• Douglass, et al., “Virtual Reconstruction as Archaeological Observation: Embracing New Ways of Treating Sites, Places and Landscapes.” Advances in Archaeological Practice (2024).

Extra

• Huang, Jiawei, et al., “From Archive, to Access, to Experience––Historical Documents as a Basis for Immersive Experiences.” Journal of Map & Geography Libraries 14.1 (2018): 40–63.
• Ottaway, Susannah, and Austin Mason. “Reconsidering Poor Law Institutions.” The Historical Journal 64, no. 3 (2021): 557–82.

Th: Getting caught up

7. Rethinking History with AI

- historical authority
- algorithmic narratives
- role of critical humanities

T: Fact, Fiction and History

• Roussou, Maria. “The Components of Engagement in Virtual Heritage Environments.” In Proceeding of New Heritage: Beyond Verisimilitude (2008): 265–83.
• Güntan, S. & Ar, B. “Recreating the past: Historical narratives and virtual environments of video games,” Mekansal Araştırmalar Dergisi, 2(1): 1-10.

Th: The role of the humanities

• Danaher, John. “The Threat of Algocracy: Reality, Resistance and Accommodation.” Philosophy & Technology 29, no. 3 (September 2016): 245–68.

Extra

• Platt, Ben. “Now the Humanities Can Disrupt ‘AI’”. Public Books, February 20, 2023.
• Klein, Lauren. “Are Large Language Models Our Limit Case?” Startwords, no. 3 (August 1, 2022).

8. Review and wrap-up

- what have we done?
- what haven't we done?
- how do you think differently about history?

T: Final Reflections

• Sachs, Aaron. “Letters to a Tenured Historian: Imagining History as Creative Nonfiction – or Maybe Even Poetry.” Rethinking History 14, no. 1 (2010): 5–38.

In class:

• brief wrap-up review lecture and take-home points
• advice on how to do well on final course reflections (due on our finals day)

Th: NO CLASS

• No class in Ortega!
• As before on our work day, I will be in the studio (MVH 2068) from 1-3:30 if you want any help
  • Even if you don’t have specific questions, please come and work!
• Stuff you should be finishing up:
  • Last campus history research in CSWR
  • Polishing the narrative and visual flow of your essay
  • (Re)doing scans either in the lab with the scanner or via your phone and RealityScan
  • Sound recording and editing
  • Starting to draft your final course reflections