HHS 126 Essays, Spring 2015

1. Digital Histories of New York: Topic due February 10. Essay due February 19.

By 2015, historians and their students could no longer ignore the wave of digital history projects available on the Web. They still read books, listened to lectures, and absorbed bits of history from TV and the movies, of course. But, increasingly, they enjoyed and came to rely on the combinations of video, text, images, and interactivity that programmers and digital historians brought into being.

Meanwhile, stodgy old historians - people who learned their craft in the 20th century, in strange, smelly institutions called libraries, using archaic technologies such as pencils and note cards and typewriters - worried about the newfangled "digital humanities." They often mumbled: "aren't these digital history projects just a bunch of flashy graphics, lacking any real intelligence or insight? What's the matter with kids today?"

Your task in this essay is to enter this conversation about the history and current state of history. You will evaluate some digital history projects, explain what you see as their successful or unsuccessful aspects, learn something about New York City's history, and share that knowledge with your classmates and with me.

STEP 1:
Browse the American Library Association's Guide to Using Primary Sources on the Web.

STEP 2:
Browse the following digital history projects and resources:

Visualizing 19th-Century New York
http://visualizingnyc.org/

Digital Harlem: Everyday Life, 1915-1930
http://digitalharlem.org/

The Roaring Twenties
http://vectorsdev.usc.edu/NYCsound/777b.html

New York Historical Society - Online Exhibitions
https://www.nyhistory.org/exhibitions/online-exhibitions

New York Public Library - Digital Collections about New York City
http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/lane/collections-about-new-york-city

The Life of a City: Early Films of New York, 1898-1906
http://www.loc.gov/collection/early-films-of-new-york-1898-to-1906/about-this-collection/

STEP 3:
After reviewing the digital history projects above, review Prof. Russell's Notes on Digital History.

STEP 4:
Come to class on Tuesday, February 10th ready to decide on a topic for your essay.

STEP 5:
Plan, outline, and write your essay. You should pick a topic, project, or theme to examine in a comprehensive way. You will write a 3-4 page essay that describes your topic and addresses the following questions: what did you learn? Did it help you to understand New York City in a new way? What kinds of primary sources did you encounter? Would you consider it a successful example of a digital history project? What are the most important aspects of the proejct that students in HHS 126 should know? Is there any aspect of the project that we can or should use in class? If so, how?

Most important, your essay must have a clear argument (or thesis) and use evidence to support it.

For matters of style:
Use MLA style citations, which means you should cite your sources in the text in a way that corresponds to your Works Cited list. (Make sure you understand the different components of a citation, particularly for a website.) You should also consult Prof. Russell's list of things to consider when writing papers for HHS 126, where you can learn to avoid a few words that really annoy me, and you can also learn things that are essential if you want to get a good grade.

STEP 6:
Once your first draft is completed, consider the genre in which you are writing by reading a few existing digital history review essays, such as the archive of History Website Reviews from the Journal of American History or the Project Reviews at the UNL Digital History site.

STEP 7:
Revise your essay. Read it out loud. Think about it. Tighten up the introduction. Highlight your own, original argument (aka thesis or interpretation). Rethink your topic sentences, and check the overall flow of the paper. Make sure your citations are correct. Finally, turn in a hard copy of your essay at the beginning of class on Thursday, February 19.

2. Primary Sources from the Vietnam War. Due April 9.

For this essay, you should work from the A Vietnam War Reader: A Documentary History from American and Vietnamese Perspectives, edited by Michael H. Hunt. At the end of Hunt's introduction, he poses five questions that readers should confront as they read the book. These questions are:

• What brought Americans and Vietnamese to blows? How did hopes and fears on each side contribute to this outcome?
• What calculations led U.S. leaders to intervene in Vietnam and defend their position there despite nagging private doubts and rising public dissent? Were there genuine alternatives to the interventionist path they followed?
• What led Vietnamese leaders to confront the Americans, and how did they ultimately overcome their vastly greater power? Can the outcome be explained essentially in terms of what the Vietnamese did, or do we need to focus on what the Americans failed to do?
• How well did the two sides understand each other, and how did their conceptions (or misconceptions) influence their decisions?
• How was the war experienced by ordinary Vietnamese and Americans?

For this assignment, pick one of the questions (or sets of questions) that Hunt poses and answer them, as best you can, in a 3-4 page essay (double-spaced, 12 point font). You should use (and cite) at least 4 primary source documents that are included in A Vietnam War Reader.

Presentations based on your essays will take place during class on April 7 and April 9. Your essay is due at the beginning of class on April 7. Keep two additional things in mind:

1. You should use MLA style citations, which means you should cite your sources in the text in a way that corresponds to your Works Cited list. You should cite each of your 4 (or more) primary sources from A Vietnam War Reader individually.
2. Consult Prof. Russell's list of things to consider when writing papers for HHS 126.

3. Source Review: Histories of the Recent Past. Due May 5.

How do we decide what current events make it into our history books? As recent events fade into the past, and become "history," what kinds of sources and evidence will future historians use to make sense of it?

You might think of this essay not so much as a traditional history essay, but instead as a comment on available sources and a note to future historians. You should begin by choosing a topic in American history from 1980 to the present that, in your view, will be a significant topic that future historians and students will need to consider. With a topic in mind, you should search for primary source documents that will be the "raw material" of historical explanations and interpretations.

In your essay, you should begin with a paragraph or two that explains what your topic is and why you believe it is historically significant. The remainder of your essay should be devoted to assessing what sources are available, and assessing the relative strengths and weaknesses of this available source material. You should analyze the following items at a minimum:

- at least two textual primary sources.
- at least two multimedia (video, images, sound, oral history interviews) primary sources.
- at least one secondary source (such as a book, media reports, or digital history projects by museums or libraries).

You should send me (via email) the topic you plan to write about no later than 7 am on Tuesday, April 28. The essay itself, which should be 3-4 pages with an MLA style Works Cited page, is due in class in paper copy on Tuesday, May 5.