HIST 4900 Directed Readings in Digital History

Welcome to a new semester at the University of Nebraska at Omaha! Below is a general outline of what we’ll be trying to achieve over the course of our semester together. If you have questions that you don’t see answered, feel free to email me or stop by my office. You can also chat about anything that comes up in this course. What is digital history and what does it offer the discipline? We will investigate how digital history can enrich the study of historical topics by looking at activities, tools, platforms, and projects. We also will explore the historical underpinnings behind knowledge production on which digital practice depend. We will focus on resources enabling new forms of scholarship, looking at tools for visualization and text analysis for generating historical interpretations, and explore alternative forms of publishing, design, and research. The course covers a range of readings along with a critical engagement with tools and resources that enable new methods for print scholarship and the possibilities of new forms of scholarship. In this directed readings course, you will study the relationship between the discipline of history and computing tools through a combination of theoretical and hands-on activities. You will read and respond weekly to a number of print and digital materials. There are two objectives for this directed readings: to explore the methods of digital history and to develop your analytic skills as a student of the liberal arts. The readings and activities reflect these objectives.