Download PDF
Due on November 9 by 5pm: A proposal for your final project. The project itself is due December 10, so this proposal should have you on your way.
This should be from a paragraph to a page, and should ideally incorporate language that can be incorporated into the project.
It’s probably a good idea to come by office hours on a Thursday ahead of time.
Given the amount of time that worksets and smaller projects take in this class, I do not expect that your final project will necessary carry the weight that a full seminar paper might.
The point is to productively extend your capacities to perform, present, or analyze historical research in a digital medium. The worksets have each set you down some particular path and then hauled you back to the starting line: the goal here is to pick one or two avenues and pursue them to the point that you’ve created something more substantial.
Group work is encouraged, particularly for public history students.
Some examples:
- A collaborative Omeka installation built around previously undigitized content.
- A collaborative Omeka installation built around previously digitized content presented in a substantially new light; for instance, a new collection pulled from a number of different collections.
- A neatline map exhibition built around a previous work arranged to tell a useful story to a wider audience.
- A prospectus for a research paper or dissertation chapter making substantial use of algorithmic methods that incorporates some relatively polished examples of the actual processes (text mining, maps, etc.) and outlines directions for future research.
- A draft of a grant proposal for a substantial digital project along the lines of some of those that we have explored (web sites, exhibitions, etc.) that you could realistically execute in the next 3 years.
- A relative comprehensive survey of digitization practices and opportunities in some area–for instance, how do the Massachusetts newspapers that have been digitized compare to those that exist on microfilm? Those that were printed? In terms of geography, racial demographics, etc.?