Adam Crymble Digital History seminar Tuesday 17 October 2017 https://ihrdighist.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2017/09/06/tuesday-17-october-2017-adam-crymble-the-history-of-learning-digital-history-c-1980-2017/

1. The History of Digital History Teaching – c. 1980-2017
Adam Crymble
University of Hertfordshire

2. Sources
• Discussion Groups
• c. 1987-2017
• Blog Posts
• c. 2000-2017
• Twitter & Social Media
• c. 2008-2017
• Course Syllabi
• c. 2003-2017

3. Simple Timeline of Digital Pedagogy
• Cliometrics, economic history,
social history, demographic
history
• Statistics!
• Computer as calculator
• Doing historical research.
Up to 1980s

4. Up to 1980s

5. Off-the-Shelf Software
• 2001 – Nancy Ide,
programming skills are ‘no
longer necessary’ for computer-
assisted work.
• Change driven by Silicon
Valley, not DH world.
The 1990s-2000s

6. The New Millennium
Public History Mass Digitisation ‘Big Data’
Plurality of ‘Digitals’

7. What not to teach
• Marc Perry
• ‘Yawning’ about tenure.
• Ryan Cordell
• DH by Candlelight
• Andrew Goldstone
• Slow down…
The Grey Literature

8. The Digital History Syllabus Corpus
• 126 ‘digital history’ syllabi
• 83 unique courses; 43 revised.
• Canada, USA, England
• Incomplete, but probably pretty
good coverage
2003-2017

9. Individual Influence

10. Gender Bias
N = 49 N = 8 N = 7

11. Geographical Distribution
Syllabi Per Country Per Year
Virginia

12. ‘Elite’ Teaching
• Harvard
• Cornell
• Columbia
• Pennsylvania
• Princeton
• Dartmouth
• Brown
• Yale
US Ivy League
• McGill
• Toronto
• UBC
• Queen’s
• Alberta
• McMaster
• Dalhousie
Canadian Medical/Doctoral
• Birmingham
• Bristol
• Cambridge
• Durham
• Exeter
• KCL
• Leeds
• Liverpool
• LSE
UK Russell Group
• Manchester
• Newcastle
• Nottingham
• Oxford
• Sheffield
• Southampto
n
• UCL
• Warwick
• York
• Ottawa
• Calgary
• Montreal
• Laval
• Sherbrooke
• Manitoba
• Saskatchewan
• Western

13. Classification of Syllabi
A. Balance between ‘History’ and ‘Digital’
B. Type of ‘Digital History’
C. Specific Content

14. Degree of Historical Emphasis
• Cameron Blevins, first ‘history
first’ class, 2012. History of the
American West.
• ‘History first’ growing in
England
• ‘Moderate’ more likely to be
American & local history
• Nearly HALF have NO
substantial historical content
N = 83

15. Approach to Teaching
• Quant is out
• Skills gap?
• Public History
• Until 2014
• USA/Canada
• Programming & Data Analysis
• from 2013
• Survey
• c. 2010-2016
(multiple categories possible)
N = 83

16. Specific Content
• Project vs Essay
• Blogging, but why?
• Schön, The Reflective Practitioner
• Graham – community building
• Torget & McDaniel – cross Uni
collaboration in Texas
• Cohen & Rosenzweig
• Still relevant?
• Historiography
• Rare but rising
• Blog posts more common.
(multiple categories possible)
N = 83

17. The Historical Trajectory
• 1950-1990s: Statistics and ‘computing’
• Late 90s-2010: Public History
• 2010-Present:
• ‘Tools’ & Programming
• Data Analysis & Big Data
• Broad Survey, no history
• History first emerging in England.

18. Select Syllabi Worth Reading
• Douglas Seefeldt, ‘History and Digital Media’, University of Virginia, 2003.
• William J. Turkel, ‘Digital History: Methods for the Infinite Universe’, Western University, 2006.
• Mills Kelly, ‘Lying About the Past’, George Mason University, 2008.
• Dan Cohen, ‘Clio Wired’, George Mason University, 2009.
• Cathy Moran, ‘Creating Digital History’, NYU, 2011.
• Cameron Blevins, ‘The Digital Historian’s Toolkit’, Stanford University, 2012.
• Kyle Roberts, ‘Digital History: The Nineteenth Century City’, Loyola University, 2013.
• Caleb McDaniel, ‘Digital History Methods’, Rice University, 2014.
• Fred Gibbs, ‘Digital Mapping’, University of New Mexico, 2014.
• Adam Crymble, ‘Digital Histories Workshop’, University of Hertfordshire, 2014.
• Anne Mitchell Whisnant, ‘Introduction to Public History’, UNC Chapel Hill, 2014.
• John Garrigus, ‘Transatlatic Revolutions and Transformations’, U. Texas at Arlington, 2016.
• Shawn Graham, ‘Digital History Methods’, Carleton University, 2016.

19. The History of Digital History Teaching – c. 1980-2017
Adam Crymble