Category: Digital History/New Deal

In this first week of class, I’ve come to realize how little I know about such an influential time period in American history. While I obviously learned briefly about the Great Depression in school, it never struck me as something that bears much relevance in American life today. Unbeknownst to me, a lot of the policies and programs that are commonplace in our government today were created as a result of and in response to the problems facing the nation during this time period. At the time, programs like the Social Security Act effectively mitigated poverty for the unemployed and those soon to retire. Today, it’s something somewhat expected and, despite some efforts to discontinue the program, has helped provide benefits to many who face similar problems to those experienced during a period of grievous financial suffering. I hope to learn more throughout the semester about the effects that major changes like this have on our nation today.

 I also hope to expand my understanding of the various methods by which digital history is shared and made accessible. It has been interesting to learn already how technology allows us to share information in so many ways other than just listing it textbook style. Already we have begun to analyze different types of projects that share digital history via media and video. This has shown me how useful digital history is already, and how easily we have come across it and not realized it, taking it for granted. Different digital projects allow the virtually endless possibilities of making information accessible at an unprecedented availability, while allowing the viewer much more ease and interaction than simply reading a book. I expect we will learn a lot more about how to utilize and evaluate these resources.

This process begins with analyzing “Apartheid Heritage,” a domain where one can view a searchable and categorized list of links to resources on the history of Apartheid in South Africa. The categories include, “Nelson Mandela,” “History Mandela Nelson,” “Nelson,” “Mandela,” and “History.” The project allows those looking for information on Apartheid History to easily find reliable resources on the topic. The creator has collected these sources, organized and categorized them, and made them both web accessible and searchable.  

Dana Cochran et al., “The Great Depression,” Matthew Downs, ed., in The American Yawp, eds. Joseph Locke and Ben Wright (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018).

Apartheid Heritage. http://apartheidheritages.org/ Retrieved from URL. Accessed August 28^th, 2019.

Part 1:

I’ll be honest, I didn’t sign up for this class because it was a requirement for my major, but because I’ve always been a big history buff who’s interested in the little things in history. Learning about how the digital world we now know was created is something that isn’t taught in regular history classes. In the first week I learned a lot about the many inventions that would lead up to the internet, computers, and basic electronics. Things like the radiophones turning into silent raves, or a codex into a printed book into electronic books are very interesting to me, because the average person doesn’t think about all the steps we need to take to invent something amazing. There was rapid development across the board for technology, going from books to computers in the span of only one century. In the future, I hope to learn more about how tied our modern technology is to obscure or even well known old technology. I also hope to see how culture changed due to the evolution of the technology of old to our modern digital tech. The great depression was a horrible time to be alive, but the need to innovate and create is never greater than in times of severe need, so I think this semester will be quite interesting.

Part 2:

I was assigned to review project #7, titled “History of the National Mall” by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. To figure out what this project is about, I looked at the “Using the Site” tab. This project is meant to give a virtual tour of the National mall by using maps, people, explorations, and past events. It’s actually meant to be used while on the mall to give full explanations of where one is at and if anything significant happened there. Searching for the actual information, for instance the “events” tab shows us various past events that happened hundreds of years ago. It appears the site gets a ton of it’s information from places like the library of congress, so one can trust it’s good information. Moving on to the “maps” tab, one can see that they’ve used a map for the mall for the project sort of like google maps, where brightly colored circles locate important or interesting parts of the mall a tourist might enjoy. Finally, in the “explorations” tab, they use brightly colored boxes with questions on them to answer possibly common questions one might have about the mall, or small facts that people might find interesting. I believe these transformations add to the scholarship by giving it a bright and easy to manage way to gain information about the National mall.

Sources:

Posner, Miriam. “ How did they make that?” Miriam Posner’s Blog.Wordpress. Published 4/17/2014. http://miriamposner.com/blog/how-did-they-make-that-the-video/

Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, “Histories of the National Mall.” Histories of the National Mall, http://mallhistory.org/.

Part One:

In the first week of this course, I learned a great deal of context. The context for this course included a basic understanding of the setting for the New Deal, the cultural associations that were established as a part of the New Deal, and developed a broader definition of “technology”. Furthermore, I received a crash course in the relevant technologies and concepts that led to the development of our modern digital age.

While I had a basic understanding of what the New Deal was and had a basic understanding of its broader effects on American society, I was completely unaware that the New Deal had any pronounced cultural effects. The discussion in the course so far has enlightened me regarding the different public arts programs that were established as a part of the New Deal. The intention of these public arts programs was twofold. After the economic atrocity of the Great Depression, many artists needed work. So, public programs put artists back to work, and allowed them the opportunity to create again. Additionally, the production of art, such as theater, and music, provided a distraction for all Americans. When consuming the arts, people were less likely to dwell on what they had lost in the preceding years.

Part Two:

For the next part of the assignment, I was assigned to review “Media and The Movement”, which examines how the media covered the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. In Miriam Posner’s framework, Media and the Movement would be classified as a multimedia narrative. The project combines longform academic writing with oral histories, feature-length films, and radio broadcasts. The sources in this project are numerous and diverse. They include films/videos, recordings, photographs, and text documents or artifacts. Most of the sources are processed by being photographed or scanned, or in some otherway digitized in order to be uploaded to the webpage. Finally, the sources are presented in a way to be easily accessible on the web and able to be observed by visitors. The digital nature of this project enhances the efficacy of the project’s sources. By presenting primary sources in line with appropriate context, individuals are able to learn in more ways than one, and see first hand what the historian is trying to convey.

References

Dauterive, Jessica. (2019, August 27). What is Digital Humanities?Retrieved from https://slides.com/jdauteri/what-is-digital-humanities#/1.

Davis, Joshua Clark & Kotch, Seth. Media and the Movement. Retrieved from http://mediaandthemovement.unc.edu/

Posner, Miriam. (2019, August 28). How Did They Make That? Retrieved from http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/exhibits/show/fall-2019/dh.

During the first few days of class, we have started our entry into the early 1900s, which included events such as the Great Depression, progressive reform, and the evolution of information processing and digital computing. It was interesting to not only look at historical events, but to also tie in the rise of new technologies happening simultaneously during that era, and how that affected the preservation of historical events. I’ve also always found the study of older technologies interesting, as I find that new technologies tend to have similarities and reflect older technology. This can be seen in a comparison between radiophone dances in the 1920s, and the newer trend of silent disco parties in modern times. While there is a difference in why the technology was used in this way – necessity versus a trend – the end result is similar. 

The digital project I analyzed was titled “Colored Conventions: Bringing Nineteenth-Century Black Organizing to Digital Life.” This multimedia digital archive was created to compile historical transcriptions, photos, timelines, exhibitions, and literature in one accessible domain, focusing on the Colored Conventions. The Colored Conventions were a series of national political meetings that strategized and pushed for fair education, labor laws, and legal justice for black individuals, and included notable delegates such as writers, organizers, church leaders, entrepreneurs and other African American leadership of the time. The multimedia project serves as a compilation of works from this time, including personal stories and background of the delegates, along with examination of their social networks, newspaper coverage, and petitions.

This digital project contains many items from Mariam Posner’s framework, including multimedia articles, timelines, transcriptions, maps, 3D imaging, and more. These tools were designed to help immerse the scholar in the information and provide a clear understanding and immersion into day to day life during this time period. This multimedia approach helps to highlight all aspects of the conventions and the notable people involved, showing where they ate, slept, and worked, along with giving accounts in their own voices. The digital project was designed to be interactive and logically organized, with information grouped into exhibits, and exhibits further broken into interactive material – such as video, timelines, and text – that make the information more readily accessed. This allows for both the historian and the casual scholar to have easy access to material, regardless of breadth of knowledge. 

References

Dauterive, Jessica. (2019, August 27). What is Digital Humanities? Retrieved from https://slides.com/jdauteri/what-is-digital-humanities#/1.

Posner, Miriam. (2019, August 28). How Did They Make That? Retrieved from http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/exhibits/show/fall-2019/dh.

P. Gabrielle Foreman. ‘Colored Conventions: Bringing Nineteenth-Century Black Organizing to Digital Life’ Database, http://coloredconventions.org/

During the first week of class, we learned about historical events such as the Great Depression, the effects of information technology, as well as digital humanities that took place throughout the early 1900s. I was intrigued to not only see how far we have come as the use of technology has advanced in many different ways, but how it has also remained the same. For example, Radiophone Dances that took place in the 1920s are essentially Silent Disco parties today. Though, if we were to compare the difference between now and then, we would be grateful that coding is no longer needed to understand and interpret text. The process in which such was made possible was through the creation of Codex, then Printed Books, and later, Ebooks. A source of text- reading often used today. 

The latter part of the 1900s into the 21st Century was a time where many of us witnessed and experienced technological advancement. From playing on block- sized computers monitors that had CD Roms and Floppy Disks to using laptops and handheld devices such as smartphones and tablets. Like many today, I often wonder how much more can technology advance and to what extent. It is my hope to learn how such can continue to impact our lives today as many of us cannot live without it through the use of social media. I would like to understand how ideas for apps like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram come about and why they are constantly changing and or updating to serve our needs as a society. 

The digital project I analyzed was titled “Slave Voyages”. The digital memorial was created as a database to explore the dispersal of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic. It provides information on the largest slave trades in history and offers resources that answer many of our lingering questions and concerns.

This source provides many examples from Mariam Posner’s framework that include timelines, 3D imaging, maps, multimedia narratives,etc. The inclusion of these tools provide those visiting the website a clear and very vivid outlook on what took place during the time. This database was equipped with sources like images, videos, and texts that were processed through digitization and organization and lastly, presented to the public in a way that was searchable and made interactive. The advancement of technology has allowed historians, librarians, scholars, computer programmers, and even ourselves the opportunity to access such information and contribute as needed.

References:

Dauterive, Jessica. (2019, August 27). What is Digital Humanities? Retrieved from https://slides.com/jdauteri/what-is-digital-humanities#/1.

David Eltis. ‘A Brief Overview of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade,’ Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Database, https://www.slavevoyages.org/voyage/about.

Posner, Miriam. (2019, August 28). How Did They Make That? Retrieved from http://jessicadoeshistory.com/cnd/exhibits/show/fall-2019/dh.

Before the first week of class, I was a little anxious as to what this History/IT class would entail, but upon taking it i’ve become excited for the course and the things we will be learning in the future. One of the main things that I found interesting during the first week was the fact that all technology now isn’t necessarily new, but rather an evolved version of previous technology. The concept of technology being ever evolving is interesting on it’s own, but realizing the level at which history has a part in the evolution of it just makes me want to delve deeper into the subject. For example, the fact that the little folder icon on your laptop exists because of the creation of the filing cabinet and manila envelopes during a time that record keeping became important just demonstrates all the working parts that go into the creation and evolution of things; time period, need, etc. So I’m excited to explore different data sets and resources that rely on historical records and see how people have decided to use and share these things to make them more easily accessible to people of today’s age. 

The project I was assigned to review was the Mapping Occupation Project, published by the University of Georgia. The project is considered an exploratory map (following the DH Field Guide), that details U.S. Army posts during the time of Reconstruction. It also provides descriptions for the data that’s being shown, such as historical background, the purpose of the army posts, and their movement throughout the period of reconstruction. The publishers of this project say that the date shared on this map can be used “ as a guideline through a complex period, a massive data source, and a first step in capturing the federal government’s new reach into the countryside.” The Mapping Occupation Project was created through the gathering of information from manuscript sources in the national archives as well as repositories. It’s also downloadable which makes it’s accessibility all that much greater. The digital tools and transformations included within this project do add to the scholarship considering the creators could have just created the map to give a visual idea of where Army posts were and left it at that, but instead they dove in further by providing information, context, and “spatial narrative” to the data. It’s interactive in that you can zoom in and out of the data and the way in which it’s displayed is visually appealing and simple. It transforms the data from the archives into something that people of today’s age can use and explore for their own research purposes. 

Sources: 

Gregory P. Downs and Scott Nesbit, Mapping Occupation: Force, Freedom, and the Army in Reconstruction, http://mappingoccupation.org, published March 2015, accessed (9/3/19).

Although I have learned about the Great Depression and New Deal in previous classes, I can’t say I’ve ever thought about these events through the lens of technology and digital humanities. Our first week of class definitely left me more confused than when I went in, but after studying one of the projects and completing the readings, I do feel slightly more confident and I hope to see my confidence only grow throughout the semester. I do not have much prior knowledge of digital humanities, but I am eager to learn more about it and how it impacted the 1930s and beyond. In last Wednesday’s class, I found the slideshow of different technology developing through time very interesting. I was especially surprised that the silent disco/dance idea came far earlier than my time. I never would have thought or believed that in the early 1900s anyone could even fathom that idea. I’m curious to know what other ideas we had originally thought were new, were actually thought of before. It was interesting to see how ideas that seem specifically relevant to our time were just as relevant nearly 100 years ago.

The project I analyzed was Papers of the War Department 1784-1800. This is an ongoing digital editorial project that is seeking to reconstruct and transcribe documents of the War Department that were destroyed due to a fire in November 1800. Since this a collection of primary sources and historical artifacts this project would be classified as an exhibit according to Miriam Posner’s framework. The Papers of the War Department 1784-1800 project is pretty straightforward in that its goal to restore historical documents that were once thought to be lost and allow these sources to be easily accessible to the public and allow the public to participate in transcription. They provide digitized images of all documents and many have transcriptions that makes understanding and reading these documents easier. This project uses sources, such as such as letters and maps, from the 1784-1800 time frame which are then processed through reconstruction and digitized to allow users to transcribe documents that can be easily presented for public use.

Sources

Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, and George Mason University. “Papers of the War Department 1784-1800.” Papers of the War Department, wardepartmentpapers.org/s/home/page/home.

Posner, Miriam. “How did they make that?” UCLA Digital Humanities.

Given the nature of research in the present day an age, and the nature of my undergraduate study in both Anthropology and History, I am by no means unfamiliar with digital sources, databases, and forms of digitized history. However, my deeper knowledge of digital history is pretty limited outside of finding and accessing different resources, and I’m excited to learn more in-depth about the creation and functionality of these digital sources, and again about historical project born digitally. I also am realizing that I’m not nearly as informed on the history of what is often considered “technology”, and I think it would be useful to learn more about this as well.

“Dash Amerikan” is an exhibit about the infamous Kardashian clan researched, compiled, and presented by authors Jordan Buysse, Alicia Caticha, Alyssa Collins, Justin Greenlee, Sarah Mceleney, and Joseph Thompson. The premise of the project is quite interesting- to dig deeper than the superficial nature and presentation of the Kardashians themselves, and to investigate the deeper impact of the family on the modern social climate, in terms of race, gender, family relations, ethnicity, sexuality, and social class, to name just a few impacts. The authors began by scanning and compiling a series of data from tweets, to elements and actions portrayed within the TV show, to the products which each individual Kardashian of Jenner has created. Other data used to support the project also began to range to studies conducted on the ‘consumer appeal of personalities, characters, licensed properties, programs and brands’, i.e. how the reach of the Kardashians has expanded from a soap-opera-like reality show, to an economic and media-based empire which has come to gain global attention and fame.
The degree to which this project reaches historical importance is rather small, given the presently evolving nature of the family and their relatively recent impact on modern culture and society, but would likely become more relevant within a historical lens (obviously) as time progresses. The tools and techniques which were employed to gather, analyze, and present data for the project though are well implemented and highly relevant to this topic of digital history. Data collected for this project were organized into categories based on their cultural relevance and which facet of influence they fell under (i.e. feminism, race, sexuality), and for the purpose of understanding the project’s purpose, were presented in a large body of text. The presentation of the project is what I think could be improved the most. While it’s not ineffective, the Kardashians are known for being a very animated group, and the digital project might be enhanced a bit with inclusions of the tweets they used as data, or images of the Kardashian clan outside of the site header, and the occasional graphic used to separate sections of the article.

Works Cited:

http://dashamerikan.scholarslab.org/

I learned a lot about the New Deal during the Great Depression and about information technology during that time period. What I did know/learned about the Great Depression was that the stock market crashed and that the unemployment rate was really high. Lots of people didn’t have a  job. Also the reading The American Yamp also says that “But just as the song was being recorded in 1929, the stock market reached the apex of its swift climb, crashed, and brought an abrupt end to the seeming prosperity of the Roaring Twenties”. The Great Depression had arrived. In my opinion, the main reason we got out of the Great Depression was because of World War II.  I learned more about information technology,from the powerpoint. We also talked during the class discussion about Alan Turing and how he cracked the Enigma code during World War II which contributed to the computer age. I learned that in the 1930’s, IBM was rescued by the Social Security Act. The punch card became the official computing device for the New Deal. As from the article “Fear itself” it says that “Sometimes the connections were relatively benign, like the New Deal’s brief flirtation with quasi-fascist economic planning in 1933”. Which means that Roosevelt started planning the new deal. From wikipedia I also found out that “The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1936. It responded to needs for relief, reform, and recovery from the Great Depression”. This was a stepping stone that helped the United States of America to get out of the Great Depression. Overall, in spite of the problems brought on during the depression, there was a lot of positive effects that came from the different eras that covered this time period.

I watched the video that was assigned to us called “How Did They Make That?”. It was about Miriam Posner’s framework on how  people contribute to a Digital Humanities (DH) project. The DH website that was given to me was Mapping the Republic of Letters. The website has different ways of showing its sources. There are three categories of analysis.  For example, there are pictures of famous philosophers among educators and historians. There are website links scattered throughout the website. The website is very organized and digitized. The DH website assigned to me was definitely made web accessible. For example, everything is laid out in an orderly fashioned and it isn’t that complicated to use. There are only four different categories that you need to choose from, so that makes the website easier to understand and accessible to almost everyone. The website has a lot of information that can help people learn about the purpose of the website which is the role letters played in history. The transformations that were added to this website are helpful and very interactive. The way that the website has pictures and different categories displayed makes it easy for people to use it.

“The American Yawp.” THE AMERICAN YAWP, www.americanyawp.com/text/23-the-great-depression/.

Boyle, Kevin. “The President Proposes . . .” The New York Times, The New York Times, 5 Apr. 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/books/review/fear-itself-by-ira-katznelson.html.

“New Deal.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 23 Aug. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal.