DIGITAL HISTORY

The course of Digital History is part of the Master’s Degree Programme in ‘Digital and Public Humanities’, connected to the Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities (VeDPH) in the Department of Humanities.
The course Digital History corresponds to the module Digital and Public History Mod. 1 (FM0489-1). It can be combined with the second part of the homonymous course (FM0489-2), centred on Public History, with a total credit weight of di 12 CFU, or chosen as single course, with a weight of 6 CFU (Digital History, FM0491).
The objectives of the course are the acquisition of Digital History’s tools and methodologies and the understanding of the main issues related to the production and consumption of history through informatics.

Please note that if you take the teaching module on Digital and Public History (FM0489) the mark of your Digital History exam will only be registered afrer you have also taken the Public History exam (and the other way round).

By the end of the course, students should be able to:
1. Identify and discuss the main techniques for decoding primary historical sources and encoding parsed information into machine-understandable systems.
2. Use information-gathering solutions and content management systems to visualise acquired information and simulate scenarios from a computational history perspective.
3. Generate interpretations and narratives around historical sources.
4. Develop a research practice and apply the acquired fundamental skills to a selected specimen.
5. Contribute to the learning environment by participating positively in-class discussions and presenting work clearly and cohesively.

A basic knowledge of history is not required but desirable.

1. Computers in the Historian's Profession: Opportunities and Limitations
• Reflections on training machine learning algorithms for the next generation of historians;
• Towards a computational approach to history: The relationship between analog and digital sources;
• Reloading the treasure of human experiences into the digital time machine.

2. Augmentation vs. Replacement - Notes for a Conscious Use of Digital Technologies Applied to History
• Computational approaches as tools to overcome cultural barriers in the historian's profession;
• Digital Preservation & Open Source;
• Intersections between Digital & Public approaches;
• Decolonizing Digital Humanities: A constructive critique of Digital History;
• Data, Metadata, Big Data: Navigating the new "sea" of sources and methods.

3. Use of Tools and Features
• Understanding and navigating the main tools available to the digital historian;
• Practical applications of the tools examined in class;
• About history: Digital storytelling and digital communication.

4. Student Projects
• Research Data Management, sustainability, and data preservation;
• Designing a Digital History project and selecting appropriate tools;
• Student presentations.

Books

Cohen, Daniel J., & Roy Rosenzweig (2006). Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. DOI: https://archive.org/details/digitalhistorygu0000cohe/page/n3/mode/2up

Salmi, Hannu (2020). What is Digital History?. New York: Wiley. https://www.wiley.com/en-us/What+is+Digital+History%3F-p-9781509537020

Blaney, Jonathan, Winters, Jane, Milligan, Sarah, & Steer Martin (2021). Doing digital history. A beginner's guide to working with text as data. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526132680/



Articles
Class discussions will be based on articles reading. Papers will be shared on Moodle from time to time.

The lecturer provides the text/materials discussed in the classroom, with any supporting tools, during the course and makes them available on the Moodle platform. These texts/materials, collected in a list at the end of the course, are an integral part of the examination program.

Assessment will be based on the following components:
1) Final oral exam (mostly revolving around the project and the topics discussed in class)
2) Development and completion of a project
3) Participation to class discussions and all the activities
5) Class presentation

oral

Under 18 (fail): - insufficient knowledge of and ability to understand the topics of the course - inadequate level of execution of class and home activities – project work which doesn’t show enough commitment and a sufficient understanding of Digital History features.
Grades 18-21: - barely sufficient knowledge of and ability to understand the topics of the course – acceptable but superficial level of execution of class and home activities – project work which shows a sufficient (but not fully satisfactory) commitment and understanding of Digital History features.
Grades 22-24: - satisfactory knowledge of and ability to understand the topics of the course – decent but not impeccable level of execution of class and home activities – project work which shows a satisfactory commitment and understanding of Digital History features, but with some gaps.
Grades 25-27: - good or very good knowledge of and ability to understand the topics of the course – more than satisfactory level of execution of class and home activities – project work which shows a major (but not outstanding) commitment and understanding of Digital History features.
Grades 28-30 (or 30 cum laude): - first-class knowledge of and ability to understand the topics of the course - excellent level of execution of class and home activities – project work which shows a remarkable commitment and understanding of Digital History features.

Attendance is strongly recommended.
Students will work on a project work and some assignments, which they will discuss in the final exam.

Teaching methodologies will include:
Lessons with activities, presentations, discussions, and interaction between professor and students.
When possible, also a guest lecture and/or a field-trip will be included.

Accessibility, Disability and Inclusion.
Accommodation and support services for students with disabilities and students with specific learning impairments:
Ca’ Foscari abides by Italian Law (Law 17/1999; Law 170/2010) regarding support services and accommodation available to students with disabilities. This includes students with mobility, visual, hearing and other disabilities (Law 17/1999), and specific learning impairments (Law 170/2010). If you have a disability or impairment that requires accommodations (i.e., alternate testing, readers, note takers or interpreters) please contact the Disability and Accessibility Offices in Student Services: disabilita@unive.it.

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Human capital, health, education" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development