Dr. Walter Hawthorne, Michigan State University
Course Summary
This course will explore the opportunities and challenges of engaging in data-informed, Internet-based humanistic research and public scholarship as it applies to the study of populations of “regular people”–common folk or non-elites–about whom very little was recorded in historical sources. My area of research specialty is the history of enslaved people of African descent in the Atlantic World, so much of the course will focus on data-informed approaches to slavery studies. However, approaches and methods learned in the course could apply to the study of any historical populations.
In brief, participants will learn how to create datasets from primary sources that contain information about many named individuals as a way to preserve the contents of and facilitate digital access to those sources. Datasets created from historical sources can serve as robust finding aids, making historical materials more accessible and usable, and as sources for the writing of qualitative and quantitative history. The writing of those histories requires an understanding of digital tools that can facilitate the analysis of datasets, so we will explore some of those tools during out time together. Participants will also learn how to preserve and disseminate their datasets by uploading them to services such as Harvard’s Dataverse or publishing them on other internet-based platforms, including those we have created at Matrix, the DH center I direct at Michigan State University.
My background in data-informed approaches to historical studies is rooted in a project that I helped create with a team of researchers at Matrix. That project is Enslaved.org. Over the past year, it has attracted 80,000 users, indicating great scholarly and public interest in and appreciation for our approach. Thus, in much of the course we will explore the development of Enslaved.org, the best practices that we have developed for data-informed methods for historical studies, our controlled vocabulary, and the ethical guidelines we have developed for studying and disseminating information about common folk in the digital age. Enslaved.org is a project that is committed to data sharing. The project preserves, makes widely available, and allows for searching across datasets that scholars around the world have created. So, in the course we’ll examine how we at Enslaved.org ensure quality submissions through a peer review process and recognize the work of our contributors through the intake for the project, which is our Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation.
All participants will be engaged in starting the creation of multiple datasets. I will provide historical sources from which to begin that dataset. If you have primary source data that lends itself to datasetting, you could begin work on that during the course. If, after our time together is complete, anyone develops a robust data about named enslaved people, we would be happy to consider it for publication in the Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation and on the Ensalved.org platform. No Digital Humanities project is a solo effort. Ideally, this course will get participants thinking about research collaborations with one another, other researchers in China, and scholars elsewhere.
Everyday, I will deliver a lecture and participants will engage in hands-on work with digital tools.
Programs and Websites
Please bring a laptop to class, if you have one. It is not required, but a laptop will allow you to participate in some demonstrations and visit some websites.
I will demonstrate the following. These are all free programs and websites. It is not required, but if you wish to participate in the demonstrations, it would be helpful if you opened free accounts:
- https://graphcommons.com/
- https://tropy.org/
- https://flourish.studio/
- A spreadsheet program such as Excel, GoogleSheets, or Apple’s Numbers. I have never used WPS Office, but I understand it is popular in China. You could use that, but I can’t help with quesitons about it!
- https://www.zotero.org/: I find Zotero to be a very useful tool, but we won’t cover it (unless you want me to)
Course Goals:
Students will develop
- an appreciation of research methodologies that have allowed scholars to write historical narratives about populations that did not leave many written records that they themselves penned;
- an understanding of the historiography of African slavery in the Atlantic World and for the ways in which data-informed methods have transformed that historiography;
- an awareness of digital tools and methods to undertake data-informed, Internet-based historical research; and
- ideas about teaching data literacy and slavery studies in undergraduate and graduate history courses.
Background Reading and Websites:
Please consult the readings and websites I have listed on this page.
Daily Activities
Day 1: Overview of Digital History
- Lectures: Digital History, an Overview
- The lecture will examine the history and importance of Digital Humanities and Digital History. In an exercise, we will begin to explore methods for digitizing objects (in this case, archival records) and for cataloging them using Tropy.
- Exercise: Approaches to Digital History: Digitization and Metadata.
Day 2: The Atlantic Slave Trade and the SlaveVoyages Project
- Lecture: New Understandings of the Atlantic Slave Trade through SlaveVoyages
- The lecture will delve into a short history of Atlantic slavery and a project titled SlaveVoyages, which is the most historiographically important Digital History project created in this century. See: https://www.slavevoyages.org/
- Exercise: The first exercise is an introduction to the functionality of SlaveVoyages. The second is an introduction to datasetting historical documents.
Day 3: Ensalved.org and the Approach of New Data Historians to the Study of Slavery
- Lecture: New Data Historians
- The lecture will examine how and why we created Enslaved.org, why it is important, and how scholars I dub New Data Historians are exploring slavery. See: http://enslaved.org
- Exercise: In this exercise, we will begin to assemble datasets from primary source material
Day 4: Enslaved.org: Its Functionality
- Lecture: Ensalved.org
- The lecture will detail the functionality of the Enslaved.org platform, its innovations, and its best practices including controlled vocabulary. We will explore in depth one dataset and data article published in the Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation. It focuses on enslaved Africans of the Archive of the Diocese of Macau. See: https://jsdp.enslaved.org/fullDataArticle/volume5-issue2-arquivo-diocesano-de-macau-batismos/
- Exercise: In this exercise, we will continue to assemble datasets.
Day 5: Other Approaches to Digital Humanities
- Lecture: For this session, I will review how I teach data informed methods in undergraduate classes at Michigan State University, examine other digital humanities projects that Matrix and other organizations have constructed, and introduce some other data analysis tools.
- We’ll conclude with an open session in which you will express your thoughts and ask questions.
- Exercise: In this exercise, we will explore some tools for dataset analysis and visualization.
DHWorkshop.org 