Week 1: Introductions (January 24, 26)
In class:
- Digital Harlem
- Mapping Early American Elections
- Throughline
- Singing Box 331
- A Sailor’s Life for Me
- Civil War and Reconstruction Governors of Mississippi
Wednesday: How the Internet works
Tasks to be completed by Week 2
- Complete Project Base 1
- Post your meme to our Slack group
- Make your introductory video
- Select a working group and sign up for a slot (first come, first served)
Week 2: Libraries and sources (January 31, February 2)
Monday: Online libraries
Wednesday: Physical libraries (our library, in fact)
Tasks to be completed by Week 3
- Submit your grade contract here
- With your group, complete the scavenger hunt about your conflict
- Read the chapter on the American Revolution from The American Yawp
Week 3: American Revolution (February 7, February 9)
Monday: Broad strokes
- By Wednesday, listen to “Revolutions,” from Intertwined: The Enslaved Community at George Washington’s Mount Vernon and “Seeing the British Side of the American Revolution” from Conversations at the Washington Library
Wednesday: The cost of war
Tasks to be completed by Week 4
- Write a blog post that answers one of these questions. Post your blog post to your group’s Slack channel.
- Were there people who were worse off after the Revolution? Give one example and explain how.
- How would you explain the American Revolution from a global perspective?
- Respond in your group’s Slack channel to one of your classmates’ posts.
- Watch this video about primary sources in the library.
Week 4: Organizing, describing, using, remixing materials (February 14, February 16)
Monday: Secondary sources
Wednesday: Primary sources
Tasks to be completed by Week 5
- Complete Project Base 2 (Zotero).
- Read the chapter by Gregory Nobles in Alfred F. Young et al., eds., Revolutionary Founders: Rebels, Radicals, and Reformers in the Making of the Nation (Westminster: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2011). (Use your library skills to find it!)
- Read Jonathan R. Dull, “A New Navy Fights France and the Barbary States, 1783–1805,” in American Naval History, 1607-1865, Overcoming the Colonial Legacy (University of Nebraska Press, 2012), 33–48. (Again, use your library skills!)
Week 5: Rebellions and early naval wars (February 21, February 23)
Monday: Internal rebellions
- By Wednesday, write a blog post that answers this question: Based on your reading, did the Founders make the right decision about a standing army and a standing navy? (These are two separate considerations!) Post it in your Slack group.
Wednesday: External conflicts
Tasks to be completed by Week 6
- In your group, read your colleagues’ arguments for or against a standing army and navy. Find a primary source (using your library skills!) that either reinforces or rebuts one of your colleagues’ argument, and post it in your Slack channel.
- Scavenger hunt! Go out into the world and find an artifact that relates to a war in the antebellum United States (or the Civil War). This artifact could look like a monument; a coin; a plaque; a flag; or really anything. Photograph whatever thing you find, from as many angles as possible. (We’ll use these photos next week.)
Week 6: How analog things become digital (February 28, March 2)
Monday: Digitization
- By Wednesday, read “Surveillance Will Follow Us into ‘the Metaverse,’ and Our Bodies Could Be Its New Data Source,” Washington Post, accessed January 13, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/01/13/privacy-vr-metaverse/. (Let me know if you hit the paywall.)
- Watch “Can we digitize this?”
Wednesday: Ethics of the metaverse
Tasks to be completed by Week 7
- Complete Project Base 3 (Tropy).
- Read “War of 1812” from The American Yawp.
Week 7: War of 1812 (March 7, March 9)
Monday: The land war
- By Wednesday, listen to “An Impressive Consul in Liverpool” (or read the transcript, available at the link).
Wednesday: The naval war
Week 8: SPRING BREAK
You must have everything turned in from Weeks 1-7 by the end of Spring Break in order to be able to receive the grade you contracted for in Week 1.
Assignments for after spring break will be updated depending on how things are going in Week 7!
Week 9: Timelines + visualizations (March 21, March 23)
By Wednesday:
- Read Theibault, John. “Visualizations and Historical Arguments.” Edited by Kristen Nawrotzki and Jack Dougherty. Writing History in the Digital Age, 2013.
- Fill out this midterm self-assessment.
Tasks to be completed by Week 10
- VERY IMPORTANT: Go to Buchanan Hall by March 25 (that’s this Friday) and view the “Undeleted” exhibit there. Write a blog post about how this exhibit makes you think about your data and how it relates to the themes of this class.
- Creative Project 1: Timeline
Week 10: Mapping (March 28, March 30)
In class on Monday:
For Wednesday:
- Find a map in the Digital Public Library of America (any map, doesn’t have to be about your topic) and write about it on your blog. Include an image of the map and a few sentences about what you think the map is trying to say about history—in other words, what is the map’s argument? Then share your link in your Slack group, and comment on others’ posts.
Tasks to be completed by Week 11
- Creative Project 2: StoryMap JS
- Listen to “The Lasting Power of Whitney Houston’s National Anthem,” from Throughline/It’s Been a Minute
- Refresh yourself about the other podcasts we’ve listened to this semester already: Consolation Prize and Intertwined
Week 11: Audio (April 4, April 6)
Tasks to be completed by Week 12
- Creative Project 3: Podcast
- Play The Oregon Trail (1990) and When Rivers Became Trails (you’ll have to download this game to your computer). Write a blog post about how these two games tell the story of American history differently. How do games help us learn history?
Week 12: Games + sustainability/ethics (April 11, April 13)
- By Wednesday:
- Read this New York Times article (you can get a free NYT account through GMU; search the library website to find out how): Charlie Warzel and Stuart A. Thompson, “Opinion | They Stormed the Capitol. Their Apps Tracked Them.,” The New York Times, February 5, 2021.
- Read Filippo Menczer and Thomas Hills, “Information Overload Helps Fake News Spread, and Social Media Knows It,” Scientific American, December 1, 2020.
NO CLASS ON WEDNESDAY: During class time, write a blog post about whether or not you think information on the Internet ought to be regulated, and what kinds of things ought to be regulated.
Tasks to be completed by Week 13
- Listen to this podcast episode about the Seminole Wars. Here’s a link to the transcript that you’ll need. I’m going to give you your document in class, so you don’t need to do that outside of class.
Week 13: Wars with Native people (April 18, April 20)
Tasks to be completed by Week 14
- Creative Project 4: Creative expression
- Read “Manifest Destiny” from The American Yawp
Week 14: Mexican-American War (April 25, April 27)
Tasks to be completed by Week 15
- Read “The Civil War” from The American Yawp
- Write a blog post about how the military history of the United States leads to the Civil War–or does it?
