Post 2: What is Digital History?
The Digital Humanities comprises what Robertson calls a "big tent" encompassing interdisciplinary digital scholarship carried out in fields such as "history, English, art history, archaeology, and media studies" (Robertson, 2011). Digital history instead focuses on the discipline of history, and the approaches and tools that are the most useful to historians and those seeking to educate others about history. Seefeld and Thomas call this branch of history "an approach to examining and representing the past that works with the new communication technologies of the computer, the internet network, and software systems" (Seefeld and Thomas, 2009).
Rising out of computing advances in the 1960s and 1970s, Digital History's origins began in the 1980s CD-ROM textbooks, history-based computer games, and Hypercard stacks (Thomas, 2019 and Ayers, 1999). My personal initiation to the world of Digital History came in 1997, when my fourth-grade Hypercard stack presentation on the history of Beaumaris Castle in Wales won first prize at the Central Indiana Regional Computer Fair. (I can pinpoint the year precisely because I vividly remember the proliferation of rival presentations on the recent death of Princess Diana.) I also learned a great deal about regional American history through the 1998 computer game "Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego?" which was created as a spinoff from a popular educational children's show on PBS. (I can still hear Carmen's voice narrating facts about Montpelier, the capital of Vermont.) I could not have imagined some of the manifestations of Digital History that have arisen since then, while other formats have changed surprisingly little.
Some forms of innovation suggested by this week's authors as potential future developments in Digital History have not come to fruition. In his 1999 article, Ayers discussed the possibility of using digital tools to transform the traditional monograph form of historical writing into a combination of "layered" formats, some paper-based, some digital, that together comprise one scholarly product. Twenty years later, the monograph survives largely untouched.
However, other predictions have come to pass: the use of what Ayers calls "hypertextual narratives" with "dynamically interlinked text on an electronic screen" can be found in the form of annotated online versions of historic texts, such as through the Perseus Project's online version of Herodotus: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0126 This project could also be considered an application of the textual analysis methods described in Brennan's article in the online Inclusive Historian's Handbook (Brennan, 2019).
Despite the promises of improved access to sources and scholarly products, easier collaboration and communication (via email, H-Net, and the ability to collaborate remotely on digital projects), Digital History also presents several potential perils, including a need for greater diversity and inclusion.
Digital History came about at a time when history was becoming more inclusive overall, broadening its subject scope to a greater "diversity of populations, topics, and approaches" (Ayers, 1999). However, this inclusivity did not expand to audience, as most popular history focused on traditional narratives of American exceptionalism (Ayers). Several authors view Digital History as a way to expand the audiences reached and the variety of subjects covered. Leon also notes the need for increased representation of women in the Digital History field, reflecting a disparity that is also present in the field of academic history overall, despite the increasing number of women in the field (Leon, 2016).
Note: I have used publication years instead of page numbers in my parenthetical citations, as all of this week's sources are websites, and I believe the year is useful in putting the quotations in chronological context.
Rising out of computing advances in the 1960s and 1970s, Digital History's origins began in the 1980s CD-ROM textbooks, history-based computer games, and Hypercard stacks (Thomas, 2019 and Ayers, 1999). My personal initiation to the world of Digital History came in 1997, when my fourth-grade Hypercard stack presentation on the history of Beaumaris Castle in Wales won first prize at the Central Indiana Regional Computer Fair. (I can pinpoint the year precisely because I vividly remember the proliferation of rival presentations on the recent death of Princess Diana.) I also learned a great deal about regional American history through the 1998 computer game "Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego?" which was created as a spinoff from a popular educational children's show on PBS. (I can still hear Carmen's voice narrating facts about Montpelier, the capital of Vermont.) I could not have imagined some of the manifestations of Digital History that have arisen since then, while other formats have changed surprisingly little.
Some forms of innovation suggested by this week's authors as potential future developments in Digital History have not come to fruition. In his 1999 article, Ayers discussed the possibility of using digital tools to transform the traditional monograph form of historical writing into a combination of "layered" formats, some paper-based, some digital, that together comprise one scholarly product. Twenty years later, the monograph survives largely untouched.
However, other predictions have come to pass: the use of what Ayers calls "hypertextual narratives" with "dynamically interlinked text on an electronic screen" can be found in the form of annotated online versions of historic texts, such as through the Perseus Project's online version of Herodotus: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0126 This project could also be considered an application of the textual analysis methods described in Brennan's article in the online Inclusive Historian's Handbook (Brennan, 2019).
Despite the promises of improved access to sources and scholarly products, easier collaboration and communication (via email, H-Net, and the ability to collaborate remotely on digital projects), Digital History also presents several potential perils, including a need for greater diversity and inclusion.
Digital History came about at a time when history was becoming more inclusive overall, broadening its subject scope to a greater "diversity of populations, topics, and approaches" (Ayers, 1999). However, this inclusivity did not expand to audience, as most popular history focused on traditional narratives of American exceptionalism (Ayers). Several authors view Digital History as a way to expand the audiences reached and the variety of subjects covered. Leon also notes the need for increased representation of women in the Digital History field, reflecting a disparity that is also present in the field of academic history overall, despite the increasing number of women in the field (Leon, 2016).
Note: I have used publication years instead of page numbers in my parenthetical citations, as all of this week's sources are websites, and I believe the year is useful in putting the quotations in chronological context.
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