Participation grades in HIST 640 are assessed on the following criteria:

• Attendance: Our class discussions are only as strong as the students that are assembled there to discuss content! Accordingly, showing up is important. If you can’t make a class, please do let the professor know ASAP.
• Discussing Material: I expect you to come to class having done the readings and reflected upon them using the prompts I provide each week. At the very least, have some answers ready to those questions - our discussioms will flow out of them.
• Discussing With Classmates: Active listening is important, and is always a bit more taxing in a remote course format. During class, I expect you to listen to your classmates and be willing to respectfully respond and engage with their psepctivesl
• Participating in any small weekly activities: We will do little things in lieu of readings, such as setting up simple websites or playing with interactive website. Please do so.

Important Proviso: In general, as things are a bit exceptional due to COVID-19, if you are having trouble contributing, have circumstances that are precluding active participation, etc., please e-mail Professor Milligan as soon as you can.

You have to write one short essay, which will be be between 1,500 and 2,000 words in length. You should pick ONE of the following THREE topics to write on.

• Historical work and argumentation. Does historical work need to have an argument? What do we gain and lose when we allow the user agency to work through interfaces and databases themselves?
• Algorithms and your previous work. Think of your last substantive research project. Could algorithmic bias or digitization bias have influenced this work? If so, how? If not, why not? What would you change in the future to avoid these issues?
• Are we all digital historians? Building out of the Module 3 discussion, elaborate on the question - are we all digital historians?

This paper is due at 11:55pm Eastern time on 4 February via e-mail to Professor Milligan. Your essay should have a thesis/argument, a clear structure, introduce documented evidence from the readings or from your past projects, and be well written and reasonably clear of typos, grammatical errors, etc.

In this proposal, you have the option of either proposing a digital media project (i.e. a website, database, spatial historical approach, video game, etc.) or to propose to write an essay that in some ways enhances our understanding of digital history or any of the topics explored here.

We will talk about this in class, but here are some example projects that you might want to do:

• A public history website showcasing your topic. Are you interested in monuments? Educational institutions? Could you imagine a spatial or public approach, similar to what we discuss in class? You could build a website about this topic.
• An essay on a critical topic. How has digitization impacted your field? Are archives transforming the kinds of work that we can do? Do web archives raise new ethical territory?
• A research database that could support your MRP or MA thesis.
• A computational analysis of something: are you curious about finding patterns in hundreds or thousands of documents? Extracting networks from correspondence?
• Anything, really…

You should be prepared to have a meeting with me to talk about your passions and interests for the course, and how we can align them with the final project so you can all have something you’re deeply proud of.

The proposal will be roughly 1,000 words and should contain:

• Argument or Objective: You need to clearly identify your project, and the working hypothesis – or goal – that you are working towards;
• A brief discussion of the historical event: In no more than 250 words or so, briefly discuss the major historical events at play in the topic you might be choosing;
• What have other scholars aruged about this topic? What are the broad strokes of the literature? Have others done a digital topic on this, or written about it?
• What sources will you be using? Will you be drawing on primary sources? Secondary sources? For each source, write a sentence or two about what the source is, and then a sentence or two about how it relates to your project.

The proposal is due at 11:55pm Eastern time on 19 February via e-mail to Professor Milligan.

Each of you will give a 10-minute summary of your project to the class, followed by a question and answer session.

Each presentation should:

I will evaluate the presentation based on the above principles.

In this final grading assignment, I will evaluate your final project. I will do so on the following criteria, bearing in mind that each project will be held to the goals that are set out in the project proposal (i.e. no April curveballs from me!). The final project is due at 11:59pm Eastern time on 15 April via e-mail to Professor Milligan. This might take the shape of an attachment, a link, etc. etc.

• Quality of writing and design;
• Effective use of sources;
• Easy to understand and navigate (if applicable);
• Response to earlier criticism and suggestions;
• Attention to detail.