On Writing In Public/Peer to Peer
Review
Daugherty,
Jack, and Kristen Nawrotzki, eds. Writing History in the Digital Age.
Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2013.
Written as a peer review volume and published in both
print and open access online formats, this collection of essays purposes to “explicate
and embody” the opportunities that historians have as a result of the digital
age. Furthermore, this volume purposes to challenge traditional beliefs about
writing and publishing scholarship. Among many topics, essays discuss
historical writing in the digital age, visual/spatial based arguments, blogging
in the academy, and more. For example, author Ansley Erickson argues that
digital tools allowed her to discover new interpretations of her sources that
she could not have discovered otherwise. Most importantly, the books’ qualities
of being born digital, having open peer review, and being open access,
demonstrate the changing practices of publication and peer review in the field
of history.
Graham,
Shawn, Ian Milligan, and Scott Weingart. Exploring Big Historical Data: The
Historian's Macroscope. Hackensack, New Jersey: Imperial College Press,
2016.
Publicly writing their book online, the authors edited their book as they received
feedback from the community and ultimately published their book as a hard copy
and online. As a result, the book’s pre-publication “Final Draft” is made
available online for free. While the book’s ideal target audiences are
undergraduate students, graduate students, researchers, and professors can all
benefit from this book alike. Divided into three sections, the authors
effectively structure their book around three areas of emphasis: the first part
of the book provides an overview of the field of digital history, the second part
of the book holds an “emphasis hands-on textual analysis,” and the third part
of the book looks as networks as being a type of analysis and a powerful
visualization (11). Through their work, the authors demonstrate different tools
available to digital historians; examples of tools include wordle, regular
expressions, and voyant. While their book is structured more like a textbook
and less like an argumentative narrative, through the way the authors wrote and
published their book, they successfully demonstrate that history can be written publicly, be made available online, and still produce revenue. Through their
work, the authors promote open access, collaboration, and peer review in the
digital age.
Gold,
Matthew K. Debates in the Digital Humanities. Minneapolis, Minnesota:
University of Minnesota Press, 2012.
This book is structured as a
collection of essays by a variety of authors in the field of digital
humanities. The various essays are categorized in such a way as to cover 6
topics: defining, theorizing, critiquing, practicing, teaching, and envisioning
the future of the field of digital humanities. One essay in the defining
digital humanities section, “This is Why We Fight:” Defining the Values in the
Digital Humanities by Lisa Spiro, uniquely contributes to the historiography of
the field; in this essay, Spiro suggests promoting the core values of openness,
collaboration, collegiality and connectedness, diversity, and experimentation
within digital humanities. Another section of the book, criticizing the
humanities, contributes to the literature of the field as it talks about
critical topics that need improvement within the field; for example, this
section discusses ways to equally promote the field to both men and women,
developing digital technology with universal design principles, and more.
On
Methodological Transparency
Blevins, Cameron. “Mining and Mapping the
Production of Space.” Online accompaniment to “Space, Nation, and the Triumph
of Region: A View of the World from Houston." Journal of American History. Vol. 101, No. 1. June 2014, web.stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/cgi-bin/site/pub.php?id=93
Published
in 2015 as the first digital methods essay, this metagraph serves as an
supplement to Blevins’ 2014 article, “Space, Nation, and the Triumph of Region:
A View of the World from Houston." In this metagraph, Blevins explains his
visualizations, the meanings behind them, and the ways he interpreted them. Explaining
his methods, Blevins shares the way he used distant reading to analyze how The Houston Daily Post created space in
the late 19th century. For example, Blevins explains how
by counting every instance of place names, he was able to “flatten” the text
and ignore context; for instance, he shares that the word “Dallas” on the front
page headline was given the same weight as the word “Dallas” in a retail
advertisement. In all, this
essay represents the changing practices in the field as it answers the call to
methodological transparency by providing explanations and contextualization to
the author’s methods. Furthermore, while Blevins does not reveal his target
audience, he is likely writing for traditional historians, other digital
historians, reviewers, and anyone reading his JAH article.
Gibbs, Fred and Trevor Owens. “The Hermeneutics of
Data and Historical Writing.” Writing History in the Digital Age.
Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2013.
Writing
to digital historians, Gibbs and Owns ask the question, how can digital
historians expect others to accept their new methodologies when the “new ways
of working with data seem like a mysterious black box?” Considering this, the
authors conclude that the new ways of digitally interpreting data demand a methodological
transparency. As part of explaining methodologies, Gibbs and Owen argue that
authors should be clear what their data implies and does not imply, how they
interpret evidence, and how they intend to use their evidence. Through their
work, the authors explain that as historians embrace the opportunities in the digital
age, they must share their hermeneutics of data (their interpretation of data) in
order to gain respect as digital historians.
On
Digital History Reviews
Written as a blog post, Cameron
Blevins shares how digital history is experiencing a new “review wave,”
pointing to the AHA Guidelines for American history, the JAH’s first digital
reviews, and other examples. In discussing the lack of online reviews for digital
history, Blevins shares how the immediacy of blogging and the challenge of
subject specialization make it difficult for digital projects to be reviewed
online by other digital historians. Analyzing the new wave of digital reviews,
Blevins shares how such reviews can often be categorized as pedagogy and public
engagement, academic scholarship, and data and design criticism. Taking issue
with these types of reviews, Blevins argues that digital historians to
substantially review digital scholarship “in terms of new historical knowledge,
insight, and interpretations that these projects contribute to the field.” Writing
for digital historians and scholars evaluating digital scholarship, Blevins
concludes that digital reviews should be based on a project’s methodological
strengths and weaknesses as they relate to the project’s historical
contributions.
Presented
as a transcription of an interview between Dr. Jeffrey McClurken and The Junto, this blog post discuses
reviewing digital history. In his interview, McClurken answers questions about
his initial experiences in the field, the influence of big data on his personal
scholarship, his own professional career, the influence of digital history on
peer review, and more. Discussing peer review and digital history, McClurken
notes that in digital history, there is no single audience, but rather,
different expectations depending on the project’s target audience. Thus, when
he chooses which digital projects to review, McClurken tries to review
scholarship that covers lots of topics that use different methodologies to meet
the expectations of different audiences. Overall, this blog speaks to the
field’s developing practice of digital reviews.
Guidelines
for the Evaluation of Digital Scholarship in History. America Historical Association, 2016.
This
posting discusses guidelines for reviewing digital history projects based on
suggestions from the AHA. According to the AHA, digital projects fall into one
of the following categories: archive, electronic essay/exhibit, teaching
resources, tool, gateway, journal/webzine, organization or virtual community.
Additionally, the AHA outlines several guidelines for evaluating digital
projects; such guidelines include addressing the topics of content, form,
audience/use, and new media. While this post is primarily written for
individuals reviewing digital scholarship, it may also be written for creators
of digital scholarship to set a standard for which their scholarship will be
evaluated. Considering this, this post serves to normalize the changing
practice of digital reviews.
Lichtenstein, Alex, Joshua Sternfeld, Stephen
Robertson, Natalie Zacek, and Vincent Brown. “AHR Exchange: Reviewing Digital History.”
American Historical Review. Vol. 121,
No. 1, February 2016: 141-186.
For the first time ever, in its February
2016 issue the AHR featured two
reviews (and author responses) of digital history projects. This is significant
for both the development of the journal and the field of Digital History as a
whole, as digital projects seek to earn the same respect shown to traditional,
print scholarship. For its first DH reviews, the AHR looked at two interactive web based projects: Digital Harlem: Every- day Life, 1915–1930 and
Slave Revolt in Jamaica, 1760–1761: A
Cartographic Narrative. Both digital mapping sites, these two projects show
how “digital tools can reveal both geospatial and sociohistorical patterns not
visible through a more “traditional” reading of the historical sources
available” (141). Comparing the two digital project reviews and their
associated author responses, Digital Harlem
was criticized for its lack of argument while Slave Revolt in Jamaica was praised for its historiographical
contribution.
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Guldi, Jo, David Armitage. Deborah Cohen,
and Peter Mandler. “AHR Exchange: On The History Manifesto.” The American Historical Review. Vol.
120, No. 2. April, 2015: 527-554.
In The History Manifesto, authors Guldi and
Armitage argue that historians should embrace the role of using the new long
dureé methodologies to study the past in order to understand the present and predict
the future. Written for professional historians and junior scholars, this book
serves as a call to arms for new long dureé studies. In their review of The History Manifesto, Cohen and Mandel
take issue with Guldi and Armitage by claiming that the evidence used to
support The History Manifesto’s
arguments are often taken out of context, misinterpreted, and lead to opposite
conclusions. In response to the critique, Guldi and Armitage highlight
the judgmental tone of the critique and then reaffirm their arguments in The History Manifesto by further
explaining their evidence.
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