Schedule of Readings & Assignments

1: Various Introductions

WED Jan 22

  • Review the syllabus, course aims, assignments, and general plan for the semester
  • Intro to Digital History/Historiography/Heritage
  • Intro to Emerging Public History Technologies
  • Relevance of Digital Heritage to Contemporary Society

FRI Jan 25: Emerging Digital Heritage Technologies

Connect to readings

2: Using History

MON Jan 27: History and Heritage

Lowenthal?

WED Jan 29: Reviewing History Theory

We spend a few days reviewing various digital history projects. Some are really good; some are not. The point is to get us thinking about what makes good public digital history? These questions will help us throughout the rest of the course and guide what we’re doing.

FRI Jan 31: Reviewing History Practice

  • Play around with 3-5 of the sites below, and come prepared to offer brief critiques in class

Some Digital History Projects

Valley of the Shadow, Virtual Jamestown, American Social Movements, Civil War Washington, Blue Ridge Parkway, Slave Voyages + a striking visualization, Colonial Dispatches, Colored Conventions, Lynching America, Mapping Segregation, Native Land, UM Heritage Project, First Days Project, American Yawp, American Panorama, Names in Brick and Stone

3: Archival Power

MON Feb 3

WED Feb 5

Read one of the following and be prepared to discuss in class. For ideas of what to think about when reading, see the reading response guidelines (even if you’re not going to write anything).

  • Marisa Elena Duarte and Miranda Belarde-Lewis, “Imagining: Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies,” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 53, no. 5–6 (July 4, 2015): 677–702.
  • Introduction to Markdown

  • Introduction to GitHub. Read through this tutorial, but do not actually do all the steps—just try to understand what’s going on and we’ll go over it.

  • IN CLASS: Solve GitHub and Markdown problems

4: From Analog to Digital Archives

MON Feb 10

WED Feb 12: Archival Interfaces

Come to class ready to discuss your experience with some of the interfaces mentioned, or others that you’ve used for something that you’ve found interesting.

FRI ❤️ Feb 14: Analog / Digital Serendipity

  • Search for a history book at https://unm.worldcat.org/ or https://library.unm.edu/, that is also held physically in one of our libraries at UNM, and note what you see in the first few pages of search results for that book.
  • Note the library call number for the book, and go find it in the stacks.
  • Browse around the book and note what kind of books are physically around it—look at a few shelves above and below, too, not just the few books on either side of your target book.
  • Write up a standard essay (like transcription assignment) (~800 words) about how these two different browsing experiences compare.
  • Obviously there’s no right or wrong answer. But strive for clarity in your description of what you searched for, what you found in both cases, and how you might explain the differences.
  • Graded on 0-10 point scale, like everything but reading responses.

Et cetera

  • Joshua Sternfeld, “Archival Theory and Digital Historiography: Selection, Search, and Metadata as Archival Processes for Assessing Historical Contextualization,” 544–75.

5: Archives and Algorithms

MON Feb 17

NO CLASS: PRESIDENT’S DAY (as if preseidents don’t get enough attention…)

Et cetera

WED Feb 19

FRI Feb 21: Community Archives

  • Jimmy Zavala 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.
  • Laura Sydell, 3D Scans Help Preserve History, But Who Should Own Them?
  • SKIM: Michelle Caswell, “Seeing Yourself in History: Community Archives and the Fight Against Symbolic Annihilation,” The Public Historian 36, no. 4 (2014): 26–37.

6: Citizen Humanities

MON Feb 24

WED Feb 26: Transcribing History

In class we’ll survey a few transcription projects and go over instructions for your transcription assignment

FRI Feb 28: NO CLASS – WORK TIME!

  • Get started with this over the weekend and bring questions to class on Monday.
  • Review the assignment guidelines. (summarized below, but important details are on the guidelines page)
  • Review some transcription tips.
  • Pick one of the transcription projects above.
  • Transcribe at least THREE pages (can be sequential pages of the same document).
  • Create screen shots of your work, including images of what you’re transcribing and aspects of the interface that you comment on.
  • Create a NEW PAGE in your portfolio for your ~800-word essay–this is not a blog post like reading responses–that describes and critiques your experience.
  • Imagine that you’re writing for other students in the class (so you don’t need to introduce what a transcription project is, for example). We all know the general assignment, but you can’t assume anyone is familiar with your site, interface, text, or experience.

7:

MON Mar 3:

MON Mar 5:

MON Mar 7:

DUE: Transcription essays

8:

MON Mar 10:

WED Mar 12:

FRI Mar 14: NO CLASS

9: SPRING BREAK (Mar 17–21)

10: The Cartographic Interface

MON Mar 24

  • IN CLASS: Maps for Critical Humanities

WED Mar 26

FRI Mar 28

11: ???

MON Mar 31:

WED Apr 2:

FRI Apr 4: NO CLASS

Et cetera

12:

MON Apr 7:

WED Apr 9:

FRI Apr 11: NO CLASS

Pick one of these two and be ready to discuss:

13:

MON Apr 14:

WED Apr 16:

FRI Apr 18: NO CLASS

Thursday (Apr 11)

  • Andrew Hurley, “Chasing the Frontiers of Digital Technology: Public History Meets the Digital Divide,” The Public Historian 38, no. 1 (2016): 69–88.
  • Bruce Wyman et al., “Digital Storytelling in Museums: Observations and Best Practices,” Curator: The Museum Journal 54, no. 4 (2011): 461–68.

14:

MON Apr 21:

WED Apr 23:

FRI Apr 25: NO CLASS

Thursday (Apr 18)

IN CLASS: UNM Spatial History essay questions, answers, and critiques. We will take volunteers to have their essay DRAFTS critiqued in class. It’s a GREAT way to get lots of feedback and ideas for improvement. We’ll also go over the directory and map pages of the site.

15:

MON Apr 28:

WED Apr 30:

FRI May 2: NO CLASS

Tuesday (Apr 23)

This short article is going to be the basis of our discussion about spatial history and erasure. It will help us link our UNM spatial histories to much broader concerns about architecture, land use, community, identity, and regionalism.

  • Gail Okawa, “Finding American World War II Internment in Santa Fe: Voices Through Time.” In Marta Weigle (ed.), Telling New Mexico: A New History. Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 2009. 360–73. (in Zotero)

For reference

16: Wrapping up & Loose ends

MON May 5:

WED May 7:

FRI May 9: NO CLASS