Month: December 2021

At the beginning of the semester, I came in with the idea that studying history was just the task of learning about details of important events from the past. However, I was wrong and over the course of the class my view of history grew with each pasting week. I learned the importance of many different digital history methods and how to use each one to do productive research and analysis. Conducting research before this course, I stuck to limited resources and would only get a glimpse into important topics or be outright lied to. Another problem I had was not doing history with the help of primary sources to check the reliability of my research. However, after the completion of this course, I can confidently say I will be more careful while looking at history with the help of new methods.

With aid from the numerous readings and portfolio activities, this course has helped push me to ask and answer my own questions in history. As I said, I came into this class with an irresponsible view on history and did not use much of the resources I learned about in this class correctly. As I completed each constructive portfolio, I found new questions on topics I thought I knew enough about. This brought a new curious side of me to life and motivated me to find the answers. This goes hand in hand with other portfolio assignments because of which, I believe I have grasped the ability to use each resource effectively to have a hand in forming my answer.

These activities have also helped shape a new historical thinking process in my conceptual approach to history. Bringing forth the need for intensive study to include many methods preventing bias and instead creating a combination reliable research. This entails to not just using multiple sources but using sources with different methods of information to gain the most out of doing digital history. From careful analyzing of articles, readings, and primary sources, I have enhanced my precision on forming strong arguments and being confident in my own research.

I chose to revise my portfolio activity 7, out of my lack of confidence in my research. Having sifted through Frederick Douglass’s autobiography to form a narrative map, I found my self trying to include too much over a short summary of his life. In some instances, I looked for other reliable sources on guidance of my study. This brought up a notion of failure in executing well rounded research. In light of this, I decided to refer back to portfolio 1’s research process journaling methods as well as give my map narrative a website review. In doing so, I was met with conflicting opinions from different sources in connection to his autobiography. This led me to believe my sources should not be treated as accurate as I thought, and I would need to find new sources. I tried my best to only refer to primary sources on the matter and doing so allowed me to share this information reliably. In conducting a website review of my narrative map activity, I discovered I failed to address the audience I was set to present to. I instead wrote with a bias that the reader previously knew about my topic of interest, so in a since and I was only creating this visual site and researching for my own extent of knowledge. I fixed this by putting myself in the shoes of someone with no true education on the matter and telling the story from that point of view. After reviewing my activity with improved historical thinking and digital methods knowledge, I restored the confidence of my research and appealed to my target audience.

I took this class knowing I loved history and the endless stories it can tell. I had no idea what digital history actually was and how prevalent it is in our lives. My major and career path has actually changed from mechanical to computer science engineering (coding) over this semester consequently bringing me closer to roots of digital history methods. Going forward, combining digital history and computer science is a legitimate profession for developing new ways to show and learn history as shown in this class. A typical tool I see my self using more will be computational data analysis. Before this class I would sometimes use google word usage search while curious on a particular topic. This form of digital history method can be a prominent tool in my career as I will be able to sort and upload my own documents for analysis using code. Overtime I would like to develop more approaches of modern digital history for use with modern topics not covered in this class. Because I actually spend a lot of my time “learning” history through YouTube, one that comes to mind is the digital history method on the review or creation of videos. In doing so I feel I would better prevent myself from unreliably learning information and presenting information in a video format as unreliable.

In Flourish, I created an interactive map depicting the populations of enslaved and free people of color in 1800 around the land of the eastern United States. The darker the red, the higher the population of enslaved people are. My main reasoning for picking this era and census data was to better realize where the deceit of slavery was in the United States after the revolutionary war and being under British occupation. One thing I was not expecting was being able to see clearly the “borders of slavery” which are visually complied into North and South through the map legend.

One way Data Maps help researchers better their understanding of slavery is through the construction of newly formed questions. This practice of digital history resonates well with my previous and nonexistent understanding of certain regions of slavery. At the same time, it draws questions of interest into the described topics wanting to pursue why certain areas had more instances of enslaved people than others. The map itself is very good at showing the history of free vs slave states, drawing a line between Maryland which holds a very large slave population and present day Pennsylvania, which holds very little. Another aspect of this map which helps better our understanding is the very enlarged populations of enslaved people on the coasts and farming areas of the nation. An example of a question this map brings, with previous knowledge of tobacco and cotton farming by enslaved persons, one can ask if plantations were set up on the coast of the United States for better access to trading to Britain. Or possibly if these areas were just good for agriculture. Lastly, taking a deeper dive into this subject and being able to compare this census map with another in a different year can potentially draw endless inquiry. Using this method as a starting point to ask more questions will excel our understanding of what we know about slavery in the United States.

Link to Map:

Link to Narrative Map:

The process of creating a narrative map allowed me to touch base with my creative side as well as research intensive side. The collection of data and research took longer than I thought and because this assignment took more than just writing, it was hard to have what I would call a finished product due to the greater possibility of input error. I had to keep going back and double checking I was using the right information with each slide. However, I still believe this challenge elevated my understanding of digital history as well as my topic of interest Frederick Douglass.

Many people already know of Frederick Douglass and his impact he had on the United States. I choose Frederick Douglass as my person of interest knowing some of his previous accomplishments myself and was excited to see how I could connect and tell his story on a map. His famous story was also rewarding and interesting to dive deeper into finding many details I never heard and was able to relay their importance in my narrative construction. When dealing with these extra details, it was hard to find what I needed to include and what I could leave out to make the map less of a research paper and more of a visual learning tool. This however creates pitfall I have noticed with many digital history methods. The use of narrative maps for example, helps numerous persons in learning of topics for the first time but must leave many predominant details out of the narration. This can create problems when using these constructive maps as a main study of history and should be treated only as an introduction into an in-depth analysis of the subject. Overall, I found the creation of a narrative map very helpful in not just a better understanding of Frederick Douglass but bettering the questions of reliability of sources when doing my own research.

Geospatial data visualization and analyzation is helpful tool for historians which involves combining data with interactive pictures or maps. This allows the user to address different factors of data at satellite or local views, helping pin point conversions of history in different regions around the world. It is the study of space and spatial movements over time. This study can be broken up into spatial practice, representations of space, and representational space. First spatial practice is day to day acknowledgement of space such as the route we take to work or the route we take to another country depending on scale. Representations of space is the archive of the actual design of space such as a building plan or construction survey. Lastly, representational space is experienced space through human association depicting a certain figurative telling such as a graveyard or concert hall. An example of Geospatial visualization we can all relate to is our phone’s GPS, mapping each road or route and their respective speed limits. This is only possible through the sifting of millions of documents and explains the affect geospatial analyzation can have.

Geospatial data, much like other examples of data analysis covered in previous portfolios is immerse with information uploaded to the internet. Since no human could physically map out each event or place taken from multitudes of documents, this form of analysis is crucial to historian research. It can arise patterns of certain events crossed with geographic mapping over time bringing forth visualization of where conflicts of interest took place. This process of study is made relatively easy and helps the viewer form new questions and arguments at their own discretion. Without the space being presented already analyzed, new conclusions of the past can arise and better our understanding of topics that were overlooked. I believe this way of historical inquiry is very productive and can bring to light many important notions of the past. As the popular phase goes, “A picture can say a thousand words”, which I believe Geospatial visualization holds true.

Just like other digital history techniques, this comes with a downside. However useful it may be, geospatial data only tells a part of the historic story. Views may only piece together their thoughts with the visualization leading to irresponsible study and false information. In some cases, this can be further destructive when the source of the image or map is lying to you. Map makers might leave out concerning data to your interest as they try to present their own interests. These might not be highlighted, and you may be left with conflicting information.

Overall, Geospatial Work is a useful 21^st century tool which enables viewers to grasp history in an efficient manner. It helps form new questions from overlooked information and is a genuine way to learn through history if the viewer is studying the information responsibly.

The research question I decided to pursue was, How Did Slavery Change After the American Revolution? I chose this because I have little knowledge of how the effects of slavery impacted the British colonies. Since I did not know what extent of slavery to expect under British rule and in hopes of finding reliable primary sources to answer my question, I first started by googling “Slavery in The Thirteen Colonies”. This brought up many problems because there were no primary sources, only articles on this topic. I then searched for primary sources in the Library of Congress and to my dismay many instances of the word slavery were brought up to describe Britain’s rule over the colonies. An example of one of these primary sources is a paper titled “To the Free Men of Pennsylvania”, which after the American Revolution had a different stigma with the word ‘freemen’, meaning a free person of color. This absence of direct sources over the topic of slavery leads me to believe that abolition was not as prevalent at this time.

 I also needed to know what slavery looked like after the American Revolution. I decided to use the Library of Congress again to search for my primary source. I found the source titled “Observations on the Slaves and Intended Servants in the Navy and the United States”. This covered the resolve of Congress’ importation of slaves and the emancipation of the enslaved after participation in the Revolutionary War. This source goes further into the idea of abolition stemming the war stating, “God forbid, we should act with less generosity on similar occasions!” Proving the idea of certain political enlightenment of the horrors of slavery leading to a stance of abolition in certain parts of the United States.

Computational text analysis is the analysis of digital documents uploaded to a data base by machine learning. It uses natural text and computer processing to examine each word in text documents. An example of this is Google’s word usage – overtime option (analysis of the popularity of a word in a certain year) which many of us have used without much thought, showing its prevalence in our day to day lives. In this digital age it has become a very helpful tool for use as a historian, helping better understand and match the language in context of historical events on a broader level. Topics in which historians would spend a lifetime analyzing documents, is done in a few minutes in certain cases. However, because of the immensity it generally comes with, this data should not be taken as face value and used only as a tool in a deeper dive of study.

One of the reasons why computational text analysis is so useful as a historian is that it can speed up the processes of historical reading. To be successful in historical reading, one must follow closely with historical reading skills, those being sourcing, close reading, contextualizing, and corroborating as referred to in “Model of Historical Thinking” from our first week of class. In some instances of study, its use can touch base on all but close reading analysis. Sourcing can be covered by checking the reliability of the website used for analysis and picking a topic with endless amounts to authors. Since all this data can be view accurately by computers, this technology allows for discarding outliners and deceptive documents. Contextualizing with computational text analysis is also similar to sourcing regarding reliability while also displaying exact dates and years from all historic data. This helps answer questions on the context of documents easily letting reviewers make connections to important past values and national events. In this analysis style, corroborating is presented by the endless amount of data from historical documents processed online to be juxtaposed. This brings to life the discovery of points of agreement, and the consistency found between documents important for a reliable study.

An example, in our class we looked at “The Language of the State of the Union” which is a website that compares the number of used words in each presidents State of the Union address. This asset provides interactive charts and graphs sorting addresses by date or word density. This method of exploration helps paint a broad picture of change in American History. However, it is important to denote that it is only general information and historians, or researchers could create bias if taken as face value. Overall computational text analysis is a valuable resource for historians if used complementary in their research, covering a large blend of online data.