HIST 301/501: Digital Heritage Studies

Logistics

• 3 Credit Hours
• No prerequisites
• Class: T,TH 9:30 - 10:45 @ 120 Mitchell Hall
• Office Hours: T 8-9:30; 11-12:30 @ 1077 Mesa Vista Hall
• Fred Gibbs (fwgibbs@unm.edu)

Course Description and Goals

This course introduces students to the key issues surrounding how to collect, organize, interpret, and ethically publish cultural and intellectual properties in the digital space. The course provides students direct experience through every step of “the digital heritage pipeline,” from research, collecting, archiving, publishing, and disseminating.

This multi-disciplinary course draw from contemporary readings in history, public history, historiography, digital humanities, literary studies, media studies, and library and museum studies. Along with our readings, we will investigate a variety of community archival collection and digital history projects to learn from past and contemporary practices. We’ll critique the various facets of these projects (data, design, interface, utility, etc.) to understand the technologies and data involved.

Student Learning Outcomes

• Understand the limitations and the possibilities of the intersection between culture heritage, critical data studies, and digital humanities.
• Gain an awareness of how the digital space can promote diversity and improve accessibility to diverse cultures and populations
• Understand critical and ethical implications to disseminating cultural heritage as a form of data and cultural literacy, and develop a personal code of conduct for their expressions of cultural heritage.
• Gain practical hands-on experience contributing to and managing digital cultural heritage projects, in order to be able to envision their own projects and transfer skills to their professional endeavors

Work Requirements and Grading

• Thorough preparedness and engaged participation in most every class meeting. (30 points; note this is roughly 1 point per meeting if you are in class AND PARTICIPATING)
• Reading responses (0-2 points each). See the Response guidelines. You can write a response for EACH item on the syllabus; so if there are two readings for one day, you can write two responses and get double points that day. You can always write responses on optional readings. All responses do have to be done BEFORE class.
• Transcription exercise (10 points)
• Geo-referencing exercise (10 points)
• Visual Essay exercise (10 points)
• Data Interface Critique (10 points)
• Complete and clean Digital Portfolio (10 points)
• Omeka site with at least a dozen items with metadata, an overview page (~400 words), one item essay (~600 words), one collection essay (~1000 words). (20 points)

Graduate Student Requirements

Graduate students will complete all of the undergraduate assignments; these will be graded in accordance with departmental expectations for graduate level work. In addition, graduate students will:

• Read an additional 2-3 articles per week, and on the second meeting of almost every week (with exceptions noted in advance) turn in a 800-word synthesis of the readings and how they fit together. (50 points; about 5 points each)
• Write and present on 2 1200-word reviews on digital heritage projects to the class. (20 points; 10 points each)
• As a final, submit a 6-page digital heritage project proposal that apply the course readings to a potential real-world project. (30 points)

Graduate students can earn up to 200 points for the course (100 for undergraduate work and 100 for graduate work). At the end of the semester, point totals will be divided by 2 and final grades will be calculated using the standard grade distribution scale noted below.

NOTE: Graduate students may not be assigned C-, D+, D or D- grades.

Grade Distribution

Points	Grade
94+	A
90-94	A-
87-89	B+
83-86	B
80-82	B-
77-79	C+
73-76	C
70-72	C-
67-69	D+
60-66	D
59-	F

Absences Policy

Up to three unexcused absences are allowed without any grade penalty. However, after that, you lose roughly two points for every absence—so that basically every two missed classes lowers your grade one notch (B+ to B, for instance). If you reach ten absences, I will drop you from the course. Family or medical emergencies are excused absences, provided that you get in touch with me ASAP about them.

Please Ask for Help

I heartily encouraged you to speak with me at any time about how I think you’re doing in the class and how it can be improved (if at all). If life gets overwhelming during the course, it can be tempting to drift away. Rather than disappear, please come talk with me about how we can accommodate your circumstances.

Please email me AT ANY TIME and AS MANY TIMES AS YOU WANT with a URL of an exercise or of your entire portfolio for an evaluation and grade estimate. I will get back to you as soon as I can, with as helpful of feedback as I can. This way you get all the feedback you want when you are ready for it.

Readings

There are NO REQUIRED BOOKS for this course. But you will need to subscribe to the course Zotero library to access assigned articles. This will be discussed in class, but for reference, please see the instructions for connecting. The URL for the group library is https://www.zotero.org/groups/1647219/digital-history-unm/items.

Writing Help

CAPS Tutoring Services is a free-of-charge educational assistance program available to UNM students enrolled in classes. Online services include the Online Writing Lab, Chatting with or asking a question of a Tutor.

Students with Disabilities

The American with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal anti-discrimination statute that provides comprehensive civil rights protection for persons with disabilities. Among other things, this legislation requires that all students with disabilities be guaranteed a learning environment that provides for reasonable accommodations of their disabilities. If you have a disability requiring accommodation, please contact me immediately to make arrangements as well as Accessibility Services Office in 2021 Mesa Vista Hall at 277-3506 or http://as2.unm.edu/index.html. Information about your disability is confidential.

Academic Misconduct

You should be familiar with UNM’s Policy on Academic Dishonesty and the Student Code of Conduct which outline academic misconduct defined as plagiarism, cheating, fabrication, or facilitating any such act.

##Citizenship and/or Immigration Status All students are welcome in this class regardless of citizenship, residency, or immigration status. I will respect your privacy if you choose to disclose your status. As for all students in the class, family emergency-related absences are normally excused with reasonable notice to the professor, as noted in the attendance guidelines above. UNM as an institution has made a core commitment to the success of all our students, including members of our undocumented community. The Administration’s welcome is found on our website: http://undocumented.unm.edu/.