History

HTY 665-0001: Digital and Spacial History

Instructor: Professor Anne Knowles

Days/Times: Thursday, 4:00-5:50pm

Location: Stevens Hall 310

Course Number: 86290

Description:

The digital revolution has transformed historical scholarship and teaching by enabling access to a wealth of research material and instructional resources.  Many historians, however, have been hesitant to adopt digital methods of empirical analysis. This seminar will examine the challenges and opportunities of digital scholarship, including how digital methods affect the process of research, the questions historians ask, the sources they use, and the answers they find.  We will particularly consider spatial history, where GIS (geographic information systems), digital mapping, and other visual approaches to data analysis and representation push the boundaries of traditionally text-centric, narrative history.  Over-arching themes of the course are the costs and benefits of digital methods and the impact of methodological choices on historical research.  This course can be taken remotely through teleconferencing.