Realizing New Models of Historical Scholarship

The Digital Past

Historians have been experimenting and innovating with digital tools from the era of punch cards and magnetic tape to the internet and the World Wide Web (Ayers, “Doing Scholarship on the Web”). Digital historians have also been predicting the transformation of the field for more than two decades, but the majority of students and professors who participate in history doctoral programs do not incorporate digital methods in their research or publications. Historians have been slow to reenvision the field, though there has been a wide range of creative exploration near the margins.3 As Ben Schmidt pointed out in his 2019 American Historical Association presentation, “The path that digital historians built in the decades of the 1990s and 2000s while avoiding the shadow of cliometrics was a far more interesting one; unlike English-department digital humanities of the period, it had no motive to make history more ‘scientific,’ and instead found ways to make historical practice live on computers and—increasingly—online” (“Two Volumes”). The most visible of the digital history projects from the 1990s and 2000s were collections of sources often intended primarily for classroom use.4 Despite Schmidt’s praise for early digital history projects, we underscore Stephen Robertson’s forewarning that although there is a growing recognition that digital tools are a part of the historian’s craft, it “does not mean that most historians have explored what can be done with digital tools, are equipped to do so, or are even convinced that those tools have anything to offer their own research and teaching” (“The Differences between Digital”).5

The incorporation of digital history into the profession and the establishment of standards has been a slow process. It was not until June 2015 that the AHA published its “Guidelines for the Professional Evaluation of Digital Scholarship in History” (it is worth noting that the Modern Language Association first approved its original guidelines in May 2000).6 The reward systems in history departments, from merit to tenure, have made change difficult. Individual digital history faculty and their projects have shown what is possible; the next step is to solidify digital history’s place in the profession.

The Case for a Digital History Doctoral Program

Creating a digital history doctoral degree program instead of a digital humanities degree or certificate presents new opportunities. The doctoral program we envision centers digital history within the discipline rather than requiring graduate students to fit their digital training—largely acquired elsewhere—into their “traditional” doctoral program. When digital history is an add-on, students may of course take the initiative to seek and acquire training from other areas, but they often find that they lack a community in which to use those skills to think like historians. It has been our experience that history graduate students who acquire their training in digital humanities centers or from interdisciplinary coursework often find that they are in the minority and research agendas from other disciplines are prioritized. Although a doctoral program in digital history will certainly welcome interdisciplinary collaboration, the focus of a digital history doctoral program allows for discipline-specific questions and concerns to be the driving forces behind both teaching and research.7 This creates an environment where historians and their students who are using digital methods enjoy a community of colleagues working in their own discipline with whom they explore similar questions and employ shared research methods (Paju, Oiva, and Fridlund, “Digital and Distant Histories”).

Such a program differs from those currently offered in the United States. The history doctoral program at George Mason University (GMU) is the closest to a formal digital history doctoral program. Although many of GMU’s graduates continue to pursue a career training path similar to those at other institutions, including assisting faculty with undergraduate courses, all of its doctoral students complete a six-credit sequence in digital history coursework.8 Some students have the opportunity to undertake additional digital history training at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM) or to complete more advanced coursework as part of a digital history minor field. A few innovative students have even published digital dissertations. But a significant number of students in the PhD program do not use digital history beyond the two required courses.

Other programs offer interdisciplinary graduate certificates.9 For example, since 2014, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) has offered a Digital Humanities Graduate Certificate Program that is open to graduate students currently enrolled in several graduate degree programs or as a standalone (nondegree) post-baccalaureate certification. The program is shared between several programs, including anthropology, art, art history and design, classics and religious studies, English, history, modern languages, and the University Libraries via the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities (CDRH). Students complete twelve credit hours, including two required courses: Digital Humanities Practicum and Interdisciplinary Reading Seminar in Digital Humanities. Because the contributing disciplines are so varied, the seminar’s emphasis is necessarily broader than one focused on a single discipline.10 Although this “agile” approach, as Heather Richards-Rissetto and Adrian Wisnicki advocate for in chapter 24 in this volume, has proven its value for digital humanities training broadly, and especially at the undergraduate level, it has not resulted in the transformative disciplinary change promised by digital history (Blevins, “Digital History’s Perpetual Future Tense”).

Without direct history department support, most digital training relies upon rare opportunities for students to work on grant-funded projects most often housed in digital humanities centers that receive support from a combination of gifts, grants, and limited institutional hard money.11 While acknowledging its obvious hands-on training benefits, it is important to note that this center-focused model is not designed to provide comprehensive discipline-based graduate training in digital scholarship, nor does it necessarily foster original student research.12 Frankly, it must also be recognized that over the course of two-plus decades, this model has not led to the full integration of digital history into history doctoral programs and meaningful progress toward the long-promised transformation of the discipline (Ayers, “Does Digital Scholarship Have a Future?”). Furthermore, unlike GMU, UNL, or the University of Virginia, most of the 158 U.S. institutions that grant doctoral degrees in history do not have a substantial digital history or digital humanities center around which much of the digital training takes place.13 Recently, much of the innovative work in digital history has been created by those who were not trained through hands-on experience at a center. One reason for this is that digital history is no longer an expensive, proprietary tool-driven endeavor only available through a center. Teaching digital historical practice instead of a tool-based approach centers the myriad new ways of conceiving, developing, and interpreting historical research questions. Therefore, we argue that it is necessary to integrate digital history into the disciplinary graduate curriculum.

Curricular Considerations

As digital history transforms the discipline, doctoral education must also change. As Roy Rosenzweig predicted almost two decades ago, historians researching the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries will need to grapple with an abundance of sources, many of which are preserved in only digital format(s) (“Scarcity or Abundance?”). In addition to such emerging challenges related to contemporary sources, historians, archivists, and other specialists have demonstrated how advances in archival procedures and digital access are already changing what historians study and what sources we use to form historical interpretations, regardless of the time period.14 Having the ability to design a new doctoral program from the ground up in response to these challenges permits the department to be intentional about its structure and funding. A program conceived and developed out of the needs and interests of a discipline can hopefully avoid some of the institutional support problems experienced by previous digital humanities initiatives. This organic development can engender the stronger financial commitment and campus buy-in that Bussell and Helton identify as being crucial for a program’s success.15

This kind of program makes digital history a second major field in conversation with the student’s specialty in history. It also allows for centering the conversation between digital historiography and methodology and traditional historiography and methodology. Here we are building upon the framework pioneered at GMU by expanding the core curriculum. The required digital component of the curriculum we advocate comprises six courses: two required courses in digital history methods, a digital historiography course, a digital research seminar, and two elective courses (spatial, textual, quantitative, data ethics, grant writing, etc.). The first digital history methods course focuses on core principles in data science and computational history, with an emphasis on creating ethical historical data from primary sources, reproducible research practices, visualizations, and various analytical techniques. The second builds on these skills by introducing students to more advanced programming concepts needed to build interactive data-driven visualizations, as well as an introduction to advanced machine learning concepts.16 The digital historiography course presents an overview of key theories of digital analysis, focusing on the various computational techniques used by historians. The digital research seminar concentrates on specific research questions and forms of scholarly communication using sources relevant to the student’s dissertation research.

One aim of a digital history program based in a history department is teaching disciplinary-based ways of thinking about data not just how to use tools. The data sets, digital projects, and metadata that digital historians compile or create are now being recognized as a valuable part of their scholarly record. As Christine Borgman states, “When publications were viewed as the sole end product of scholarship, few incentives existed to curate data for use by other researchers,” but, she continues, “As opportunities for data reuse increased, more scholars began to recognize the inherent value in their data. Data from multiple research projects can be combined or compared, and results can be replicated or validated. Data- and text-mining methods enable new research to be done with old data” (Scholarship in the Digital Age, 182). A department with a digital history doctoral program has the responsibility to recognize a place for data within the traditional definitions of historical scholarship.

The increase in the size and digital nature of historical collections makes possible and often necessitates new ways to search and analyze sources. As Robertson notes, the “closed and sometimes shrouded character of commercial products has encouraged historians and other humanities scholars to be simply consumers of digital content, to accept the search interfaces provided by vendors as the means by which to conduct research using digitized sources rather than looking to tools like topic modeling software” (“Differences between Digital,” 297). As historians, we have the opportunity to use new technologies in our work and to reflect on our own participation in the two-way interactions between technological change and societies. Historians must be able to recognize the built-in biases of digitized collections and the algorithms used to create and access their content.17 To do this they will need to develop a familiarity with databases that extends beyond simply knowing how to use them into understanding how they are made and how they transform data (Schmidt, “Do Digital Humanists Need?”). Likewise, data ethics and privacy will be even greater concerns as archivists and historians decide what to collect, whom to provide access to, and how to present this information in ways that do not jeopardize the privacy and safety of individuals.18

Elective courses provide students with opportunities to explore and master digital history methods and techniques necessary for their particular focus. For example, digital technologies have enabled spatial analysis to develop from just the simple plotting of events into the creation of spatial narratives and what historian David Bodenhamer has dubbed “deep maps” containing links to the data that they represent (“Narrating Space and Place,” 21–23). Rather than using maps to simply illustrate data in support of an argument made in writing, deep maps and spatial narratives allow both scholars and their audiences to create new knowledge and discover new meanings through sophisticated spatial analysis. The boundaries between maps and visualizations of data have blurred, making deep maps an analytical tool central to understanding spatiotemporal patterns.

Historians are increasingly employing distant reading in conjunction with traditional close reading and are finding value in utilizing textual analysis tools to reveal patterns and connections within and across corpora.19 Although network analysis is not a new approach, the advent of social media is pushing more historians to become aware of its value and requiring that they understand and can create and interpret visualizations that may contain many more nodes and edges than they could review by hand. As Lauren Tilton’s work with statistician Taylor Arnold demonstrates, types of sources, such as the ubiquitous social media post and the tremendous amount of visual data available for analysis from photographs and television shows, have facilitated the opportunity for historians to collaborate with experts from disciplines beyond the humanities and social sciences. Such collaborations allow for the creative adaptation and application of traditionally discipline-bound methodologies to bring fresh insight to historical questions (Arnold and Tilton, “Distant Viewing Lab”; Wexler et al., “Photogrammar”).

One way to foster innovative collaboration is for a digital history PhD program to accept students from a variety of backgrounds. The range of skills that students bring from master’s degrees in different fields provides diverse perspectives and approaches for thinking about using digital methods to make historical arguments. A flexible curriculum would allow students whose graduate degree is not in history to take the foundation courses typically taught in a history MA program, and those with more of a background in history would immediately focus on the digital curriculum. Cohorts of students can work closely and learn from each other’s diverse backgrounds in areas such as computer science, cultural studies, philosophy, library and information science, law, and English while focusing on history. Program learning outcomes for a doctoral program in digital history must represent both digital and traditional methods but also foreground ethical and historiographical training and practice.

In addition to the required digital courses, students would take or transfer in traditional historical methods and historiography courses, complete a major field of history, choose a concentration field, seek an internship, and participate in a digital history “salon” course that features guest presentations from leading digital history practitioners from the home and other institutions. Such a program should fully fund each student who needs funding and provide them with assistantships, internships, and opportunities to teach. Experience both inside and outside of academia will enrich the thinking of students. To prepare students to think more broadly about the uses of historical training beyond the professoriate, we recommend that a digital history program requires an internship in a professional setting. Although many programs offer internship opportunities at the undergraduate level, as of academic year 2011–2012 (which marks the most recent humanities indicators survey data from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences), no history departments in the United States did so on the PhD level.20 Faculty involved in teaching digital history will use their professional networks to help students arrange these valuable experiences in libraries, archives, and museums as well as in industry and through participation in existing digital history projects at other institutions. These will be separate from opportunities for students to work on faculty projects at their own institution as part of their assistantship. We do not pretend that this is the answer to declining job prospects for history PhDs, but we intend to equip our students to work with us to find new opportunities.

A digital history PhD program based in a history department prompts a rethinking of department, university, and disciplinary norms instead of leaving each student to swim upstream through established expectations. Such a program will teach students to ethically and professionally conduct archival research and collect, analyze, and visualize materials using traditional as well as digital techniques. Students will demonstrate knowledge of the historiographical literature in digital history and two other fields of history and demonstrate proficiency in at least two digital history methods. Students will make an original contribution to their field of history via a final dissertation project based significantly upon the use of digital methods and presented in written or digital form.

Creating a digital history doctoral program in a history department brings the way we train historians in line with the changes in research and scholarly communication. As the creation of new sources, the format of traditional sources, and the preservation of historical sources continue to change, the training of historians must be modified to meet these new realities. While many of the key elements of historical research such as the close reading of archival manuscripts will remain the foundation of the discipline, technological developments and institutional and cultural changes require that historians develop additional research skills, methods of analysis, and forms of scholarly presentation. A doctoral program focused on digital history provides the opportunity to fully integrate digital methodologies into the study of history. Finally, a PhD in digital history makes it possible to focus on opportunities afforded by the digital turn in our discipline so we can see what history students and faculty can do with professional training in digital methods.

Notes

1. 1. For more on argument-driven historical scholarship, see Robertson and Mullen, “Digital History and Argument.”

2. 2. For a discussion on the pace of fulfilling the promise of digital history see Ayers, “Does Digital Scholarship Have a Future?” and “Doing Scholarship on the Web”; Blevins, “Digital History’s Perpetual Future Tense.”

3. 3. In particular, consider efforts sponsored by the American Historical Association, including “Gutenberg-e Program,” available at https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/historical-archives/gutenberg-e-program.; Ethington, “Los Angeles and the Problem”; Thomas and Ayers, “Overview”; Censer and Hunt, “Imaging the French Revolution.” See also Omohundro Institute, “OI Reader,” available at https://oireader.wm.edu/.

4. 4. Although digital history has demonstrated the potential to play a central role both in the development of historical arguments for historians as well as in the ways the discipline communicates with the broader public, we recognize that putting something online does not mean that it is public history. Both public and digital history can advance historical arguments, but not all digital history is public history.

5. 5. Other disciplinary assessments include Townsend, “How Is New Media Reshaping?”; Townsend, “Report Claims History Discipline Failing”; Townsend, “Historians and the Technologies.”

6. 6. For the AHA guidelines see “Guidelines for the Professional Evaluation,” available at https://www.historians.org/teaching-and-learning/digital-history-resources/evaluation-of-digital-scholarship-in-history/guidelines-for-the-professional-evaluation-of-digital-scholarship-by-historians. For the MLA guidelines, see “Guidelines for Evaluating Work,” available at https://www.historians.org/perspectives-article/aha-publishes-guidelines-for-evaluation-of-digital-scholarship-september-2015/.

7. 7. See Thaller, “Notes on Digital Groundhog Day” in chapter 6 in this volume.

8. 8. See Crossley, Regan, and Catalano, “Graduate Assistantships in the Digital Humanities” in chapter 13 in this volume.

9. 9. For example, George Mason University has also started a certificate program in digital public humanities. See Robertson, “Teaching Digital Humanities Online” in chapter 9 in this volume.

10. 10. For a discussion on the unrealized potential of digital history see Blevins, “Digital History’s Perpetual Future Tense;” Ayers, “Doing Scholarship on the Web.”

11. 11. Roy Rosenzweig founded the Center for History and New Media (CHNM) in the Department of History and Art History at GMU in the fall of 1994. The Virginia Center for Digital History, founded in 1998 by Edward L. Ayers and William G. Thomas III, is credited with coining the term “Digital History”; the CDRH was formally established at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2005.

12. 12. As Crossley, Regan, and Catalano argue in this volume, balancing grant deliverables and providing meaningful graduate training are often at odds.

13. 13. See the AHA Directory of History Departments and Organizations Institution Search, available at https://secure.historians.org/members/services/cgi-bin/memberdll.dll/openpage?wrp=search_institution.htm; see also American Academy of Arts and Sciences, “Digital Engagement,” which was created using data from White et al., 2012–13 Survey. For a global list of institutions that offer advanced degrees in digital humanities, see Digital Humanities Notes, “Advanced Degrees in Digital Humanities” at https://github.com/dh-notes/dhnotes/blob/master/pages/dh-programs.md.

14. 14. For how digitization is changing what we study, see Milligan, “Illusionary Order” and History in the Age of Abundance?; for an example of how something as simple as text search is reshaping transnational research, see Putnam, “Transnational and the Text-Searchable”; for an archival perspective, see Owens, Theory and Craft of Digital Preservation.

15. 15. See Bussell and Helton, “Why Our Digital Humanities Program Died and What You Can Learn about Saving Yours” in chapter 5 in this volume.

16. 16. The framing of these two methods courses is inspired by the Clio I and Clio II courses that have been offered GMU and discussed in greater detail by Crossley, Regan, and Catalano in chapter 13 in this volume.

17. 17. For more on bias and other challenges exacerbated by new search technology, see Noble, Algorithms of Oppression; Halavais, Search Engine Society; Padilla and Arroyo-Ramirez, “Bias, Perception, and Archival Praxis”; and Watson, “Bias and Inclusivity in Metadata.”

18. 18. For example, see Society of American Archivists, “SAA Core Values Statement and Code of Ethics,” available at https://www2.archivists.org/statements/saa-core-values-statement-and-code-of-ethics.

19. 19. For the use of digital methods to form historical arguments, see the recently created journal Current Research in Digital History, available at https://crdh.rrchnm.org/.

20. 20. See “Occupationally Oriented Activities for Doctoral Students, 2011–12 Academic Year (Nonacademic Employment Only),” created using data from White, Chu, and Czujko. Accessible at https://www.humanitiesindicators.org/content/indicatordoc.aspx?i=526.

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