Session 1 - Introduction: Rationale, Definitions, Current Practices

Public History and New Media

”Some of the most effective uses of new technologies can be found in [public history], though surely much is yet to be done in this area.”

-- Thomas Bender, et al., The Education of Historians for the Twenty- First Century, AHA Committee on Graduate Education (2005)

This course’s chief aims are threefold: 1) to introduce and explore the key issues, analyses, critical debates, and opportunities in using the new media; 2) to read and think about new media in public history practice in particular; and 3) to put what we read and discuss into practice by learning how to construct, post/maintain, and use the new media in your work and other public history situations. To do this, we’ll read, view, debate, hear guest experts, and produce history for the Web (our primary “new medium” in the course). There’s a rapidly expanding literature on the subject, a good “textbook” that cumulates well the issues and experience of those pushing the medium, lots of excellent and not-so-excellent examples we will want to view and discuss to help clarify purpose, audience, access, design, and other issues, and fortunately for us, some resident expertise to present and discuss the latest word on research and publishing matters involved in new media. And as we clarify and critique, we will also produce; you will construct as a team project your first professional public history site for a professional public history client, our Public Historical Studies program.

There is no list of books to buy for the course since the primary texts and sites you will be reading for each session can be found on-line. Digital History: A Guide and The AHA Guide to Teaching and Learning with New Media are both available as books if you would like to get copies, though for this course’s purposes reading the Guides on-line is not only sufficient it is a useful course-advancing experience. You will be asked to bring your own storage medium (disks, flash drive) to keep and bring projects.

PROSPECTIVE SCHEDULE

Session I - Introduction: Rationale, Definitions, Current Practices

4/4 READINGS:

Danl Cohen& Roy Rosenzweig, Digital History: A Guide to Gathering,

Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web. Chapters: Intro, Becoming Digital

(http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory)

PROJECT & ASSIGNMENTS:

view Center for New Media site (http://chnm.gmu.edu) ; simple website construc’n

Session 2- HISTORY of NEW MEDIA, NEW ISSUES OF AUDIENCE

4/11 READINGS

Edward Ayers, “Pasts and Futures of Digital Media”

(http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/PastsFutures.html)

Cohen& Rosenzweig, Digital History chs: Exploring the Web; Getting Started

Thelen & Rosenzweig, Presence of Past, excerpts (to be distributed)

Vernon Takeshita, "Tangled Webs: The Limits of Historical Analysis on the Internet"

Dartnouth History Newsletter (2001)

( http://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Ehistory/newsletter/spring01/web.html)

Douglas Linder, "Lessons Learned from Building the Famous Trials

Website," The Jurist (Jan 2001) ( http://chnm.gmu.edu/resources/essays/d/10)

PROJECT& ASSIGNMENTS: discuss & assign group project tasks

SITES: Williamsburg Court cases – example of interactive history on line

http://www.history.org/History/teaching/order/court.html

Session 3- EXHIBITION: MUSEUMS

4/18 READINGS:

Steve Dietz, "Telling Stories: Procedural Authorship and Extracting Meaning

from Museum Databases"

(http://www.archimuse.com/mw99/papers/dietz/dietz.html)

Coldicutt, R. and K. Streten (2005). Democratize And Distribute: Achieving A Many-

To-Many Content Model. Museums and the Web 2005: Proceedings. J. Trant

and D. Bearman. Toronto, Archives & Museum Informatics, 2005.

(http://www.archimuse.com/mw2005/papers/coldicutt/coldicutt.html).

Trant, J. and B. Wyman (2006). ”steve.museum: exploring social tagging and

folksonomy in the museum,” a paper for the Tagging Workshop, World Wide

Web 2006 (http://www.archimuse.com/research/www2006-tagging-steve.pdf)

Barger, Chuck, “Key Ingredients: How the Smithsonian Built an Interactive Web Site

for 150 Small Museums,” David Bearman and Jennifer Trant (eds.). Museums

and the Web 2004: Proceedings (2004)

(http://www.archimuse.com/mw2004/papers/barger/barger.html)

SITES: Museums and the Web:The International Conference for Culture and

Heritage (2006 meeting, Mar 22-26) -- program, awards

http://www.archimuse.com/mw2006/index.html

http://www.withoutsanctuary.org/index.html

http://www.keyingredients.org

ASSIGNMENTS: TBA

Session 4 - SOCIAL USE & CONSEQUENCES in HIST

4/25 Guest: Bruce Bimber – his research on public effects, civic engagement (Information

and American Democracy, 2003; Campaigning Online, 2003) on CITS,

interdept PhD emph in Tech & Society.

READINGS: Bruce – chap, Rheingold’s Smart Mobs, other similar?

Horrigan, John “Online Communities: Networks that nurture long-distance

relationships and local ties,” Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2001

read “Summary,” pp 2-6

(http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Communities_Report.pdf)

Katz, James E. and Ronald E. Rice. Social Consequences of Internet Use: Access,

Involvement, and Interaction, excerpts

Shah, Dhavan V., Nojin Kwak, and R. Lance Holbert. "Connecting and

Disconnecting with Civic Life: Patterns of Internet Use and the

Production of Social Capital," Political Communication 18 (2001), pp. 141-162

ISSUES & IDEAS: on how communities of web use form, how use of new

media affects extant public & social practices,

ASSIGNMENTS: TBA

Session 5- HISTORIC PRESERVATION, ARCHIVES, & OTHER PH USES

5/2 READINGS: Joshua Brown, History and the Web, From the Illustrated Newspaper to Cyberspace: Visual Technologies and Interaction in the Nineteenth and Twenty-First Centuries,” Rethinking History 8:2 ( June 2004)

(http://chnm.gmu.edu/resources/essays/d/29)

Roy Rosenzweig, "Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era," American Historical Review (June 2003)

(http://chnm.gmu.edu/assets/historyessays/scarcity.html)

Cohen& Rosenzweig, Digital History chaps: Collecting Online

ASSIGNMENTS: TBA

SITES

http://explorer.monticello.org/

http://www.curatingthecity.org/

http://www.curatingthecity.org/map.jsp

http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/index.cfm

Session 6,8 - ARCHIVING: HOSTING, PLANNING, META-DATA

5/9 Guest: Ron Boehm, Chief Executive Officer, ABC CLIO