Over the next two classes, you will be researching and constructing arguments about the role of “cultural conflict” in the 1968 presidential election.
By September 24th, 8:00am:
Find three primary sources that are each from a different database. Post your sources to the blog — make sure no classmate has posted that sources already, if they have, find another! — with a brief description that includes:
a) what database you found the sources in;
b) who created it, when it was created, and where it was created (consult Sam Wineburg’s “Thinking Like a Historian” for the type of “meta” questions you should ask of a document); and
c) a brief statement on how each artifact speaks to the role of “cultural conflict” in the 1968 election. Your response should not merely be about a conflict, but about its relationship to that specific election.
If you are confused about what constitutes a primary source, see this primer from the Yale University libraries. If you’re still confused, ask us.
Do your best to upload a copy of the artifact to the blog, which can accept pdfs, or screenshots of documents. At the very least, link to the artifact. Again… if you’re stuck, ask us.
The Newman Library provides access to a range of databases. Click here to view them.
The databases you should search within are:
- American Periodicals
- AP Images
- Art Museum Image Gallery
- BlackThought and Culture
- Cinema Image Gallery
- Economist Historical Archive
- Eighteenth Century Collections Online
- Financial Times Historical Archive
- In the First Person
- JSTOR
- New York Times (1951-2008)
- Savings and Loan Crisis Digital Archives
- Wall Street Journal (1889-1994)
- Women and Social Movements
Next week, you will each craft a historical argument using the primary sources has collected. We will spend time talking about this on Monday.
In addition to the above assignment, complete the reading: Kate Theimer, “Archives in Context and as Context,” Journal of Digital Humanities, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Spring 2012).
Review Assignment
- Twitter conversations
- Blog posts
- Take aways from this assignment
- blogging best practices
- what is historical analysis?
- what does it mean to construct an argument?
- missing from responses: notion of network ethics, strong statements on “the commons.” Why?
Readings for Today
- Sam Wineburg, “Thinking Like a Historian,” TPS Quarterly.
- Key Concepts:
- Reading documents: author, context, time period—that form a mental framework for the details to follow. Most important of all, these questions transform the act of reading from passive reception to an engaged and passionate interrogation.
- Sourcing: Think about a document’s author and its creation.
- Contextualizing: Situate the document and its events in time and place.
- Close reading: Carefully consider what the document says and the language used to say it.
- Using Background Knowledge: Use historical information and knowledge to read and understand the document.
- Reading the Silences: Identify what has been left out or is missing from the document by asking questions of its account.
- Corroborating: Ask questions about important details across multiple sources to determine points of agreement and disagreement
- Key Concepts:
- Cohen and Rosenzweig, Digital History, “Collecting History Online.”
- Key Concepts:
- Traditional archives v. Online
- Interactivity
- Preservation
- Born Digital v. Digitized
- Intellectual Property/Privacy/Authenticity
- Key Concepts:
One of the things that caught my attention on the ds106 site was the site’s title “Digital Storytelling it immediately bought to my attention the similarities to our class name. My first link was a story The Importance Of Words. The story began with a question of the importance of words in our lives. Then the writer when into the story
The story that I picked was about the importance of a language and the role that words play in our life. This story talked about people who did not have any language. As Susan was very surprised seeing a 27 year old man without having any language, since he was born deaf and he did not know that there is something such as words. And when he learn sign language from Susan, he became so emotional that he cried because the meaning of life changed for him as he realized that everything as its own name and definition. As he said that his life without language was a dark life but now he is in a bright life.
As for this and other intellectual property ds106 seem to have a of respectful and an open policy like our digital history class. As for fair use they invite people to use and share the information just like wikipedia. I love one of their “subtle rules of NO APOLOGIES for not being able to participate when other parts of life intrude.” But particularly it was the way in which they choose to layout the creative commons in a language that was very simple and inviting to ready. I believe that it was my first time actually finishing the legal language of any document online. Impart too because they especially didn’t make it very long as to discourage the masses from reading it.
Finally, the theme of giving back, contributing and meeting new people gave me new motivation to take part in an online communities like ds106 and that made me see the importance of the site like these.
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