Category: Digital History/New Deal

After our first two classes of The Digital Past and the introduction to the New Deal, I have already learned quite a bit. Everyone in the class has a different perspective on what we discussed, whether it is having a grandparent who lived during the Great Depression or only ever learning about it from a text book. Using many different online tools that I had never heard of will be challenging, however, I am curious to see how we can build a bridge between our digital age and our past, using these tools. I have only ever learned about the 1930’s from textbooks and lectures. It will be very interesting to see how we are still learning lessons from America’s past through technology that didn’t exist then.

I was assigned Digital Humanities project number 25, America’s Public Bible: Biblical Quotations in U.S. Newspapers created by Lincoln Mullen. The basis of this online resource is to explore the history of the Bible in American newspapers and to discover the trends of the quoted verses. This site also looks to explore the relation of these quotes to what was happening at the time of their use. This resource looks at the different interpretations of the quoted verses as well. “[God] hath made of one blood all nations of men” (Acts 17:26) This was quoted at the time when people began to speak out against slavery. This quote was the “crucial text with which American Christians thought about race and slavery, especially since it was a proof text for the unity of human beings regardless of race.” (Mullen, America’s Public Bible) This is just one example of the thousands of quotes found in American Newspapers.

When looking at the trends of the number of quotes used, one can see that the number increases during a period of national hardship. The number of quotes used during the 1920’s and The Great Depression is much larger than in 1910. Mullen provided, on the website, two graphics showing these trends. One is a graph showing the difference in number of quotes between The Bible, The Old Testament, and The New Testament. The second graphic shows the trends for the different verses, Acts 17:26, John 15:13, Luke 18:16, and Proverbs 14:34. All of these quotations can be found on the Explore the Quotations tab. You can also find specific quotes separated by decade and passages that were frequently quoted together on the Topics and Verses tab. This page I found particularly helpful as I do not know very much about the bible. This page helped me understand better the use of specific quotes. Since quotes were put into time periods in which they were used and I had prior knowledge of these times I could connect what the quote really meant. The Final page on this site is the sources and methods. Muller includes on this page not only all of his sources, but the code he used to collect the quotes.

Sources

Lincoln Mullen, America’s Public Bible: Biblical Quotations in U.S. Newspapers, website, code, and datasets (2016): <http://americaspublicbible.org>.

The Denver star. [volume] (Denver, Colo.), 09 Jan. 1915. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84025887/1915-01-09/ed-1/seq-4/>

After this first week of The Digital Past and the introduction to the New Deal I am looking forward to finding the silver lining and the best parts of the era. I have previously learned about a few of the New Deal programs, the National Register of Historic Places and the Civil Conservation Corps. I find those areas really interesting and I am hoping we explore those more. As far as the tech side I am treading water, using so many different programs is a bit confusing, I am used to a more streamlined way of addressing classes. I know that as a history professional I will need to create digital projects at some point, so knowing how will be a fantastic skill to have. I am looking forward to understanding and trying my hand at it. 

I analyzed project 6 this week “Sensory Maps”. In keeping with Posner’s “black box” way of decoding a digital project I headed to the “about” section. I found that the creator/designer is Dr. Kate McLean. Her project is a new way of looking at cities, using how they smell. I instantly thought of Willy Wonka and “smell-o-vision”. Smell-o-vision is the use of incorporating smell to enhance an experience. It is used in tandem with television, one example is when they introduced the smell of chocolate in a screening of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory at The Lincoln Theatre. Disney is also known for the smells they pump down main street in Disney World and DisneyLand. It invites the visitor to follow their nose straight into a confectionery shop. This same idea is what Dr. McLean was studying. How people follow their noses around a city. Her project is a collection of maps of how people experience a city sensory ways beyond the strictly visual. She has made the collection interactive in that the user can click through the collection and determine which sensory experience and map they want to learn more about.  

The next part of Posner’s analysis tool addresses how a creator makes their data usable in a digital way. For this aspect Dr. McLean has taken information from “smell walks” she has done, or has done with others. They track what they smell as they move about a city. She then built infographics from the data collected. As for how she did this, I am not sure what tools or the intricacies are to be completely honest. I am hoping we cover some of that in this class. The video was really helpful in learning a framework for examining a digital project. 

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/

McLean, Kate. “Sensory Maps”.2014. https://sensorymaps.com/

https://lincolntheatre.org/film/willy-wonka-and-chocolate-factory-smell-o-vision