Reading, Writing and Knowing in Early America and the Digital Age
By admin
“License not found” still,
Tableau has forsaken me,
I will have my day.
As Alec and Kurt noted, the presentation date falling a week before the final deadline was a bit concerning. For starters, I was underprepared as I had let myself forget about it, thinking all along “Oh, I’ve still got time; I have another week.” I panicked the day of trying to transpose my thoughts from Microsoft Word to USCScalar. Let me tell you… USCScalar was much more stubborn than its promotional and instructional materials let on. Specifically, I had trouble uploading documents to fit well into Scalar. Every time I tried, the text would end up off-kilter, and it looked awful. Maybe I should have seen that coming. Regardless, I am excited to work with the software and figure out the intricacies that make it churn out the linked, polished pages to which Dr. Shrout has exposed us throughout the semester.
Enough about my presentation.
I was surprised and impressed to see the variety of digital media my classmates employed in their projects. Between all of us, I don’t think a single method of digital representation was repeated. I think the diversity in choice reflects on the diversity of our interests as a class. Even with multiple classmates presenting on transportation networks, they all chose to illustrate similar information through different means, showing that they have different visions for the end project. Further, this speaks on the importance of technical presentations as a whole, as they allow the publisher to portray the information as she sees most fit regardless of artistic ability. Different digital media are designed for different digital representations, streamlining this process. Obviously, I have to commend Sherwood for creating his own website entirely, giving him absolute autonomy over his finished product. But this approach isn’t feasible for most. The use of differing platforms is exciting because it leads me to believe that we will have a variety of interesting project topics each shown in its own interesting way.
By admin
While figuring out how to organize my thoughts for this blog post, I read through my classmates’ thoughts on Tuesday’s presentations and was amused to see Aidan express jealousy (however slight) for those of us attempting more “creative routes” in our final projects. I had been concerned that my unconventional–one might say wacky–approach to the project paled in comparison to the more official, traditionally academic pursuits of my peers. In particular, Sherwood’s use of mapping and Avery’s social network site struck me as emulating projects we have studied in class. Despite encouragement from Dr. Shrout, I still came away slightly nervous that my undertaking is too “out there.”
The main source of my worry concerns my ability to present a clear historical argument in my podcast. I want to smoothly integrate my argument into the podcast without clearly defining it as a “thesis,” but I also don’t want the argument to get lost in the anecdotes and dramatic flair of the program. Another challenge I anticipate is to write the podcast with a tone serious enough so that historical arguments do not sound out of place in the dialogue, but dramatic enough that it doesn’t sound like an essay read aloud.
Although Alec expressed relief that our classmates are encountering technical obstacles and frustrations, I had the opposite reaction–hearing about my peers’ difficulties makes me realize that I have a long way to go before I turn in my final project.
Finally, congratulations to my classmates for a successful semester of digital history.
By Cordelia
Like Alec said, and like Aidan just mentioned, I’m really glad that everybody else is finding some difficulties with their projects. I get that that phrasing does not sound entirely kind, but as I’ve been having difficulties getting my script to be exactly as I want it it makes me feel just a bit better to see others struggling in the same, or really even in different, ways. We can do this.
I congratulate those members of our class who are using and exploring new, complex computer programs to create an intricately designed project (shout out to Wilson) as I am just using wordpress in its usual manner. I say usual manner because I was also just as impressed with Eleanor’s modern utilization of the tool. I would have liked to have become fully adroit in an interesting online application such as Neatline, but I am a bit like Kurt in that regard – I’d rather just stick with what I know and know that I will be able to use it. So, I will continue with wordpress and perhaps, iMovie.
I really enjoyed the presentations of Sherwood, Avery, and Alec and the mapping that they’ve accomplished so far. I liked the ability of Sherwood’s railroad map to update through the years and it reminded me a bit of the post office map we looked at earlier this semester. I found the usability of it to be quite good and the functionality something that can be incorporated into my own and others’ projects.
Overall, I (once again) agree with Aidan in that our class has an excellent set of projects and the diversity in topic and medium is something that I found fascinatingly wonderful and that I’m sure, when it comes time to grading, Dr. Shrout will enjoy as well. I was extremely impressed with the work of our class and wish everybody luck in the completion and polishing of their projects.
By admin
Let it not be hidden, this is a tortuous and forced pun at best. However, with the NFL draft in recent memory I couldn’t help remembering the word and thinking to myself how similar this presentation was to a rough draft, but arguably more useful. Like Alec said, it was very reassuring that other people in class are hitting road bumps in their projects and it is greatly helping to reduce the finals stress to not feel too far behind everyone in the class.
I will say that as interested as I am in my topic, I am slightly jealous of those in the class who are taking more creative routes to their final projects’ completion. The use of podcasts or a similar, yet entirely fictional narrative is both fascinating and inspiring, and I can’t wait to see how they turn out. There are clearly a bunch of intelligent minds in the class and it’s good to know as I prepare to graduate that Davidson is still going from strength to strength in that regard.
Preparing for the presentation definitely had me frustrated with Tableau, but it encouraged me looking through my data that I did have some useful information after all and that with the help of Tableau’s software (assuming it eventually decides to work), I should be able to bring up some interesting visualizations that may challenge or support the current musings of the field. I am excited to get it working so that I can use the new vision of the data in order to finalize and execute my argument (and therefore finish what will be my last assignment at Davidson College).
By Kurt Vidmer
The presentations seemed togo very well for everyone. Although I was skeptical about giving a presentation on a project not due for another week, it really did serve as an effective means of preparing us for our final submissions.
However, more importantly than that, the presentations allowed us to see what types of projects other classmates were engaging in.
Due to the fact that this assignment was very open ended, it allowed for people to truly personalize their own projects, and it was interesting to see what other students came up with, as there was a very diverse range of forms that people chose to take.
I especially thought that Alec and Carolyn’s projects seemed very interesting. Both of them used programs that nobody else did, Alec with neat line text plot and Carolyn with podcasts. Also, their topics were truly unique as well. Alec analyzing personal love letters is very clever and can give great insight into the locations and type of communication that was being exchanged between loved ones. With Carolyn, the fact that she was able to use cookbooks was very cool because she said that cooking is one of her passions. At Davidson, very rarely are we able to engage our passions into our school work, so it was very nice to see that this project allowed Carolyn to do so.
In regards to what was said Alec said about the presentations forcing us to really get the ball rolling on our projects, I definitely agree with his logic. I also believe that the required meetings with Dr. Shrout also helped to hold us accountable for starting on our projects early.
By Alec
Initially, I was unsure about the usefulness of doing project presentations a full week ahead of the due date. And I wasn’t wrong to predict that many of us would be getting up with unfinished products – Sherwood found a bug in his site’s visual style, I couldn’t get Palladio to open my project, and one of Eleanor’s pages opened up blank. A few people didn’t even have sites that were ready for primetime.
And that’s awesome.
Because for one thing, it’s pretty reassuring to see that other people are running into the same sorts of difficulties as I am. Being able to nod sympathetically at hurdles my peers have encountered or problems they’re stuck on is a good feeling, especially considering how isolating digital work like coding or web design can seem. I’m not sure getting up in front of a class with an essay full of typos would garner the same level of understanding from the audience. These presentations were a friendly reminder that we’re all working with foreign and challenging tools, and that none of us should expect ourselves or one another to be master Neatliners or WordPress gods after just a few weeks.
Furthermore, there’s also definite value to being forced to “demo” a site live. I think in our own work with our projects we tend to fall into a routine of testing out the same links or opening up the same pages. When showing our work to others, however, we have to switch gears and present things in a way that makes sense to a new viewer. And invariably, we run into glitches – glitches we probably would have otherwise overlooked.
Finally, I can hardly think of a better testament to the essence of digital humanities than to have the phrase “Oh, I need to fix/change/add/delete that” constantly muttered during presentations. Digital work is by definition highly transitory, and a digital project’s design and argument can be overwritten in mere seconds or with only a few clicks and keystrokes. I did a good deal of work on my own site this morning, and as a result some portions of my project bear little resemblance to what I shoed yesterday. It’s entirely likely that many of our final projects will undergo significant transformations by the time they’re turned in, and even then they won’t be “finished”, just polished. And that, too, is awesome.
By Eleanor
My project is a database of sermons printed in New England in the pre-Revolutionary War colonial period (late 1600s to mid-1700s). The digital exhibit is hosted on WordPress, with a static front page detailing giving some historical context for the sermons. That page will also give a link to another page where I cite the scholarly sources I used in my research for visitors who might want to do further reading on the subject. Each sermon is a blog post containing an image of the cover page of the sermon and data on when, where, and by whom the original sermon was delivered, and when, where, and by whom this copy was printed. I also include any interesting notes about this printed sermon and a bibliographical citation and link back to the archive where I found it. The post is then also put into WordPress “Categories” representing the data about the preacher and printer. These categories are listed and hyperlinked at the bottom of each post. Users can click on the name of a category (like “Published in 1687” or “Printer: Samuel Green”) to see a list of all other sermons that also belong to that category. At the top of the page, there is space to put background information about the person or place being searched for. There will also be a page where users can browse lists of categories.
This filtering system provided by the digital medium of WordPress brings something new to the table with regards to historical analysis of these sources. It allows users to easily sort the data and to look for connections or patterns. Hopefully I’ll find some interesting correlations as I continue to build the site. Themed databases can also be useful for historians – maybe someone studying this topic in the future will make use of the fact that I’ve already pulled together relevant sources from several different databases.
I started my research by looking at what had been produced by the earliest colonial printers, and what I ended up finding was a lot of sermons produced in New England. I knew from previous history classes that Christianity (and especially Protestant, and in some areas Puritan or Quaker, versions of Christianity) were important to early New England society, but this discovery really drove that idea home for me. When given a new, revolutionary form of communication technology, what did colonial New Englanders chose to do with it? Publish sermons. Maybe it was an explicit choice on the part of printers or maybe religious printings were just what ended up making them the most money and they followed the market. Either way, the extant primary sources tell us a story of a time and place in which Christianity was a cultural priority. As well as giving historical context and directions on how to navigate my site on the front page, I plan to talk about this scholarly analysis there too (or maybe to break it up into sub-pages all linked to by that introduction).
I’m working on coming up with a clever title for the project and giving the site an interesting and easily navigable design. Clunky database interfaces and poorly designed sites can really put a damper on the research process. (As was excellently described by Sherwood and Carolyn’s critique of the Library of Congress’s “American Memory” database.) I want to make my database as streamlined and appealing as possible, so I’m asking questions about that as I do the peer review assignment. (Suggestions are welcome!)
By Sherwood
Many of my classmates are conducting network analyses for their final projects. Rather than simply collecting primary sources, parsing them, recognizing trends and drawing conclusions, they analyzed relationships between the sources.
For “United States of Amourica,” Alec conducted a network analysis on language within antebellum love letters. He visually demonstrated the relationships between words using Textplot, which allowed him to quickly identify trends. Avery identified key figures in the founding of Davidson College by their correspondence. She discovered that individuals who performed multiple roles within the community comprised the bridges of her network. A significant component of my own project, which demonstrates the evolution of early Southern railroads, involves recognizing the relationships between individual lines. Of course, this narrative has ultimately manifested itself as a dynamic map.
Apparently, network analysis demands visual representation. But why are networks best represented visually? During her presentation, Avery inquired into what makes this particular methodology effective, by identifying its key features. She explained that network analysis visually demonstrates the flow of information within a community. Furthermore, connections represent an individual’s social capital and ability to influence others.
Interestingly, none of these features explain why network analysis seemingly demands visual representation. Instead, I would argue that something about the way humans experience relationships makes us more comfortable learning about them visually. Consider the alternative. In my experience, textual representations of networks are difficult to grasp. For example, imagine the relative complexity of a book about the community of founding fathers, compared to a diagram consisting of nodes and edges.
I think these musings about visual representations of history point towards a single conclusion about the nature of information. Namely, that information itself exists in varying forms, and is best consumed in varying forms. Otherwise, why would humans have five senses instead of a single receptor? Historians have ineffectually used language to recorded sights and sounds from every place and time. But can these sensations be accurately captured and conveyed with only words? It’s a case of using the wrong tool for the wrong job. Through digital history, information can be preserved in more diverse forms. Perhaps these tools are the key to enriching our understanding of the past.
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