historying

Courtesy of Digg, I came across an article about the creation of controversial games, including the well-documented and discussed Super Columbine Massacre RPG, which, as its title implies, allows you to play the perpetrators of the 1999 Columbine massacre. According to many tech-savvy diggers, the story is old news. But it was the first I had heard of it, and it raised a lot of reactions for me.

My first reaction was a visceral disgust. For many people my age, Columbine (along with 9/11) was one of those seminal “remember where you were” events of our lifetimes. As such, its memory is still charged with emotion. I immediately thought, “How could someone turn something to serious into a game?”

But the more I read about it, the more I came to, if not admire, then at least respect the game’s creator, Danny Ledonne. He seems to be less of an attention-starved incendiary, and more of a thoughtful, albeit reactionary, artist. At the heart of the matter lies a basic question: where do video games fit into the scheme of creative production? Many people view them as diversionary hobbies, which can be pretty or engrossing, but not art. Is a video game so much worse than writing a first-person fictional account, drawing a graphic novel, or filming a gory movie about the tragedy?

The reason why people seem to react so strongly to video games, I believe, is not that they cannot be considered “art.” It is that there is an intensely interactive element to games. Books, paintings, and films can all transport you and drop you into another world. But video games give you significantly more independence to explore, and at least partially, to control that world. In a theoretical movie from the perpsective of the shooters, you can see their perspective and “feel” like you are shooting people. In a game, that reality is heightened by the fact that when you decide to push a button, you decide to shoot someone.

To tie the subject back to scholarship, I wonder what would happen if a student made this game as part of a class project (computer science, sociology, philosophy, etc.)? What would the the responsibility of fellow students, the teacher, the school administration in addressing this issue? I can imagine how this very scenario would make any dean or administrator break out into a cold sweat. The implications of academic and expressive freedom are quite obvious.

Finally, Ledonne himself brings up the idea of exploring a serious, societal issue through gaming. This is one of the major hurdles facing educational gaming, as there is resistance from both sides that implies educational games are either too serious and academic, or not enough. I’ll end with a quote from Ledonne that I found particularly thought-provoking in this regard: “There is little in the realm of socially conscious gaming-software that does more than merely amuse for a few idle hours. Yet while some low-selling games offer pedagogical education (in geography, math, etc.), games that genuinely challenge social taboos or confront real cultural issues are nearly non-existent. I wanted to make something that mattered.”

(This is the third installment of my review of Placing History. See the first and the second parts.)

I’ve finally finished Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS are Changing Historical Scholarship. As my previous posts have made clear, I’m quite impressed with the breadth and depth of the compilation. As before, I’ll briefly recount the remaining chapters, and wrap up my thoughts at the end.

“Mapping Husbandry in Concord: GIS as a Tool for Environmental History,” by Brian Donahue. I liked this chapters for a multitude of reasons. On a personal note, his research is quite similar (though wider in scale) to the work I did in mapping property holdings and transactions of Venture Smith. So in a self-congratulatory mood, I found myself nodding with satisfied agreement at his various points about the benefits and drawbacks to mapping land deeds and parcels. On a less personal level, I liked the various angles he took in pursuing his study of Concord – especially examining seemingly disparate holdings of a variety of original families and noting patterns of land use.

“Combining Space and Time: New Potential for Temporal GIS,” by Michael Goodchild. For starters, the cover illustration for this chapter was a piece of Charles Minard’s famous “Carte Figurative,” which depicts a staggering array of geographic, temporal, and statistical information regarding Napoleon’s ill-fated Russian campaign:

Charles Minard's "Carte Figurative"

Information graphic guru Edward Tufte described it as “the best statistical graphic ever drawn,” which effectively canonized it for any map and information graphic nerd such as myself. This is a roundabout way of saying I was excited to start reading Goodchild’s chapter. Goodchild doesn’t dissapoint, as he uses decades of geography experience to explore ways in which the field is gradually shifting to incorporate temporal data. Although its heavy on technical geography, it’s a rewarding chapter that covers one of the fundamental challenges of historical GIS: how do you visually display the relationship between space and time? Goodchild predicts that this challenge will rapidly diminish, as tools and systems to display things such as dynamic data, or even a history-specific model, will become more and more accessible and widespread.

“New Windows on the Peutinger Map of the Roman World,” by Richard J.A. Talbert and Tom Elliot. Talbert and Elliott present an analysis of the Peutinger Map, a nearly 7 meter long Roman map depicting the Mediterranean world and beyond, constructed around 300 CE:

Detail of Peutinger's Map

I liked this chapter a lot, despite my complete unfamiliarity with the subject matter. The authors make compelling arguments backed by GIS analysis, such as: “the basis of the map’s design was not its network of land routes (as has always been assumed) but rather the shorelines and principal rivers and mountain ranges, together with the major settlements marked by pictorial symbols.” They present a quantitative analysis of routes, and utilize a histogram to further examine the segments and their distances.

“History and GIS: Implications for the Discipline,” by David J. Bodenhamer. This chapter, along with the first chapter and conclusion, gives the best “big-picture” perspective on historical GIS. Bodenhamer describes the field of history as a whole, in particular elements of it that relate to spatial analysis. He believes that in order for GIS to become a valuable historical tool, “it must do so within the norms embraced by historians…” GIS is well-situated to do so, because it uses a format of presenting information (the map) that historians are already familiar with, and its visualization and integration of information makes it easier to display the complexity of historical interpretation. He also discusses the challenges to historical GIS. One point I really liked was that technology as a whole, and GIS in particular, often requires a level of precision that historical documents cannot display within “a technology that requires polygons to be closed and points to be fixed by geographical coordinates.” Other challenges range from the theoretical (ex. temporal analysis) to the practical (ex. learning a completely new discipline). Finally, he succinctly sums up one of the greatest challenges: “GIS does not strike many historians as a useful technology because we are not asking questions that allow us to use it profitably.” I could not have said it better myself – until historians begin to ask the type of questions that can be addressed through spatial analysis, GIS will likely remain a technological oddity within the discipline.

“What Could Lee See At Gettysburg?” Anne Kelly Knowles. This is probably one of the most accessible chapters in the book for a layperson. It combines an engaging narrative prose with rich, stylistic maps, and a “popular” subject matter (the Battle of Gettysburg). But more importantly, it clearly presents an answer to a historical question, while contextualizing the issue and presenting possible ideas for future studies. Viewshed (line-of-sight) analysis is of obvious and particular interest to military historians, but it has other implications as well. In particular, this chapter illustrates the phenomenal power of GIS to transport the reader to the past, and get a micro sense of “being” there.

Beyond thoroughly enjoying Placing History, I believe it’s an important contribution to the field of historical methodology in general, and (of course) historical GIS in particular. The compilation gives a wonderful balance while thoroughly exploring the topic: its current state and background, case studies ranging from micro to macro and “hard” to “soft”, discussions on theory and approach, and an outline for the future. I recommend the book to educators, historians, digital humanists, or anyone with even a passing interest in a growing and valuable area of scholarship.

As of right now, the most-emailed article on the NYTimes.com is “Literacy Debate – Online, R U Reading?”, written by one of their publishing reporters, Motoko Rich. Like most articles of its sort, it touches a nerve with me.

Much like Nicolas Carr’s Atlantic article, “Is Google Making Us Stoopid?”, the title of “R U Reading” carries an inherent value judgment. Meant to be a clever imitation of how these whippersnappers write without grammar nowadays, it is a direct appeal to older people who see this kind of digital lexicon as uneducated and, well, stupid.

To be fair, Rich does a passable job of presenting both sides. And the vast majority of the arguments on the anti-digital reading side made me irate. Some examples:

“Some traditionalists warn that digital reading is the intellectual equivalent of empty calories.”    – So, if I’m reading a series of online articles and exercises about quantum mechanics, it’s “empty calories”? And conversely, if I’m reading a trashy mystery novel, it’s a crucial learning process? Come on. All of that traditional book-learning doesn’t seem to have taught much about making generalizations.

“Learning is not to be found on a printout,” David McCullough, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, said in a commencement address at Boston College in May. “It’s not on call at the touch of the finger. Learning is acquired mainly from books, and most readily from great books.”   -This one made me go off the wall. Three points: 1. McCullough is often chastised within academia for a lack of serious, in-depth historical analysis. There is an implied after thought of “great books – such as my own John Adams.”  2. You mean to tell me that someone who has made millions of dollars through book sales telling a group of young people they need to read (cough, buy) more books is not in the least bit conflicting? 3. This implies that anything you “learn” outside of a book is probably not really “learning.” Like, say, math. Or painting. Or music. Or foreign languages. Unbelievable. I lost a lot of respect for McCullough with this quote.

Rich took a particularly patronizing tone in her portrayal of fan-fiction as a poor substitute for reading. It would be like excerpting the vitriolic, racist sections of Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia to portray the entire canon of American political theory. It made me want to sic Henry Jenkins on her.

“What we are losing in this country and presumably around the world is the sustained, focused, linear attention developed by reading,”   – Again, traditionalists seem to take it for granted that a “sustained, focused, linear” style of learning is the apotheosis of scholarship. The early 21st-century world couldn’t be LESS “sustained, focused, linear.” As Rich acknowledges at one point, enthusiasts of digital literacy rarely, if ever, deny that the traditional method of reading and learning is not important – it is just that the digital kind is rapidly growing in importance.

Finally, Rich barely touches upon the real potential for digital literacy. She quotes some perspectives that champion the ability to gather and synthesize information more quickly, but basically glosses over the enormous intellectual power of things like collective intelligence, collaboration, and innovation. Just like reading is not all about Dr. Seuss or Anne Rice novels, digital reading is not all about gossip blogs and Facebook. This shouldn’t be a zero-sum game. Traditional and digital literacy can and should coexist as fundamental skills necessary for navigating today’s world.

Bill Turkel wrote a thought-provoking post titled “Towards a Computational History.” I agree completely with his section on collective intelligence. A lot of digital history spells out the methodology of tools and technology, but the more theoretical shift in production and dissemination of information is of course equally important to the future of the field.

Eric Rauchway wrote a great article for The New Republic explaining why parallels between John McCain and Teddy Roosevelt fall flat.

One of the pleasant benefits of taking a break from school and having a 9-5 job (along with a peaceful 45 minute metro commute each way), is that I can read  a ton of books that aren’t assigned to me by a course syllabus. A Pulitzer Prize, along with some interesting blog reviews, have placed Daniel Walker Howe’s What Hath God Wrought onto my short list. For similar reasons, Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher has been added as well.

Finally, Matthias Schulz of Spiegel Online has an interesting article on how the myth of Cyrus II as a pioneer of human rights developed. Schulz attacks this particularly insidious piece of propaganda, and isn’t afraid to take issue with heavyweights such as the United Nations and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Shirin Ebadi. The historian in me appreciates his revisionism, but would just like to see his sources.

(This is the second installment of my review of Placing History. See the first and the third parts)

I’ve just finished reading about half of Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS are Changing Historical Scholarship, edited by Anne Kelly Knowles. I’ll briefly go through each one, and focus on the ones that particularly interested me.

“Creating a GIS for the History of China,” by Peter K. Bol. Bol, chair of Harvard’s Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, discusses his China Historical GIS project. The project attempts to create a basic framework and data source (both spatial and temporal) for geospatial analysis of Chinese history. On a theoretical note, Bol argues that in the case of China, historical GIS should utilize a greater reliance on point data in place of polygons for marking boundaries and territory, in order to better replicate the top-down administrative system of traditional Chinese cartography.

“Teaching With GIS,” by the late Robert Churchill and Amy Hillier. Churchill gives a good overview of the value of GIS in a liberal arts education. I liked his point that one of the benefits of using historical GIS is that any in-depth use of the technology requires an equally in-depth understanding of the problem you’re looking to address. Great point. Because so much of GIS is front-loaded, in that you spend a huge amount of effort in obtaining and managing the data, it requires you to really get your hands dirty in the sources themselves. Hillier gives a lot of great examples of students’ work using historical GIS, mostly Philadelphia-based data. Some of them also included a great 1896 map by W.E.B. Du Bois detailing social class in the city. She also gives some useful tips for educators who want to incorporate GIS.

“Scaling the Dust Bowl,” by Geoff Cunfer. I loved this chapter. Cunfer follows up his previous research in Knowles first book, Past Time, Past Place, by additional analysis of the Dust Bowl. In this chapter, he takes on the common perception of the dust bowl as championed by Donald Worster’s Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930′s. While some of Cunfer’s analysis supports Worster, he takes issue with Worster’s commonly-held assertion that the capitalistic over-development of lands for farming the major factor in the fabled 1930′s dust storms. Cunfer first demonstrates through spatial analysis that, although plow-up during the 1920′s did contribute to the Dust Bowl, it was in fact instances of drought that had a much more direct correlation.

He goes on to further his critique of the notion that the Dust Bowl was an extraordinary phenomena caused by human activity. By examining and mapping newspaper accounts of dust storms from the 19th century, along with storms after the 1930′s, he finds that “dust storms are a normal part of southern plains ecology, occurring whenever there are extended dry periods.” Although extensive plowing can enhance the problem, it was not “the sole and simple cause of the Dust Bowl.” Cunfer’s analysis succeeds on many different levels. First, I like the accessibility of it. There’s always a temptation to include too much in the final products, to show off the fruits of your hours and hours of labor. Instead, his maps are clear, uncluttered, and persuasive.  Second, I like the way he blended traditionally quantitative analysis tools (GIS) with qualitative historical research (newspaper accounts). He does a good job of highlighting this tension, and aptly warns of its danger, while explaining simply how he accomplished it. Third, his work is a great example of the “right way” to use new technology to both challenge and supplement traditional historical arguments, and in doing so, present an original and different narrative.

“‘A Map is Just a Bad Graph’: Why Spatial Statistics are Important in Historical GIS,” by Ian Gregory. This chapter was much more technical, and included scary words like “regression coefficients” and “heteroscedasticity.” Although statistics in particular, and math in general, is low down on my list of skills, I got a fair amount out of the chapter. I liked his critique of the traditional thematic map, which usually displays one type of data, and with usually one variable involved. Statistical analysis can go beyond simple thematic maps and really open up the powerful underbelly of GIS.

There are several more chapters that I am looking forward to reading and reviewing in a later post.

I finished reading Philip Roth’s American Pastoral a couple of weeks ago, and came away impressed at not only the novel’s literary merit, but also the author’s skill in painting a brushstroke of twentieth-century American history. The book follows the life of Seymour “Swede” Levov, a former high-school athletic standout from Newark, New Jersey who seems to live the post-war American dream: married Miss New Jersey, took over and successfully expanded his father’s business, and lives in a beautiful country home. Predictably, this idyllic life is shattered, when his only daughter joins the radical and violent counter-culture movement and ends up committing an act of terrorism for her cause.

What I found fascinating was Roth’s ability to weave together nearly forty years of history as alternately a backdrop and main character, within the plot. One element that absolutely blew me away was his ability to craft the juxtaposition between the immediate post-war era with the radicalism and social upheaval of the 60′s and 70′s. Roth does an impressive job of demonstrating the hollowness and fragility beneath the “Leave it to Beaver” surface of the 50′s. Historians have written extensively about the contradictions of American society during these years, as unprecedented prosperity and national power belied severe social inequalities and isolation. His historical backdrop picks up speed as it moves into the next decades. During this time, historical allusions cover everything from the New Left to the Newark Riots to Watergate. Both LBJ and Nixon have a kind of just-off-stage presence throughout much of the book.

While a strongly stylized work of fiction, I think American Pastoral could serve as a wonderful historical teaching tool. In my high school history classes, my teacher did a phenomenal job of incorporating literature into the curriculum. As such, works like Things Fall Apart, All Quiet on the Western Front, and The Things They Carried served to educate our European and American history classes far more than any textbook. The obvious danger is the blurring between historical fact and fiction, and utilizing literature in a history class requires far more skill and subtlety for a teacher than asking their students to turn to page 546 in their textbooks. Nevertheless, learning to evaluate a source for reliability and bias remains a bedrock of historical study. I realize this is hardly an original epiphany, but it was one that struck me with particular force while reading American Pastoral.

In a similar vein, I also just read Geraldine Brooks’ Pulitzer-Prize winning March (a Civil War epic), along with John Thatcher’s rather self-congratulatory post “A Historian’s Daring Use of Fiction to Tell the Story of the Black Death,” outlining his upcoming work The Black Death: A Personal History. I liked Brooks’ novel as a literary work, and I especially enjoyed her afterword explaining how she did her historical research, the choices she made, her conscious omissions, etc. I thought she succeeded in combining adequate historical accuracy with vivid literary craft. Meanwhile, I’d be interested to read Thatcher’s work, and applaud his attempt: “My motives were those of a historian: to teach the truth about the period in so far as we understand it, and to reveal the lost history of the Black Death, rather than to invent it or simply tell a good story.” Let’s hope he achieved his goals.

I was pleased to read that a group of scientists has decided to crowdsource some of their genetic research by creating a “Gene Wiki,” where individual contributors can add to gene stubs. The group outlines this structure in their report, “A Gene Wiki for Community Annotation of Gene Function”: “Each gene stub consists of a sidebar detailing the symbols and aliases, external identifiers, gene function (as represented in Gene Ontology), and genomic location.” Normally, I would duly note the development and chalk it up to another example of how the sciences are far more open to collaboration and innovation than the humanities. However, I then read a post by Pearl Duncan detailing how ancestral DNA research is transforming the ways in which some African-Americans pursue their own family’s genealogy and history.

A cursory search shows that Duncan is far from alone in pointing to this trend. The decrease in the costs of genetic analysis in the past two years mirrors a rise in the number of genealogists employing this technology, and in particular African-Americans in uncovering their ancestry. Provided you have enough disposable income, this is a great opportunity for someone to reconnect with their own personal past. For the descendants of slaves, DNA analysis gives voice to a history that has been disproportionately muzzled by the annals of history.

Over the summer of 2006, while I was doing research on Venture Smith, a group of researchers spearheaded the exhumation of his gravesite in East Haddam, CT. Included in this archaeological excavation was an attempt to locate enough DNA material to conduct a full-scale analysis of the man and his family. The efforts garnered international attention (from USA Today and BBC, among others) and were strongly supported by Smith’s descendants. While ultimately unsuccessful in obtaining DNA, the project was a success from an education standpoint.

I would love to see a project that sought to document and analyze an array of historical genetic material. As someone who has not taken a real science class since high school, this is in the realm of pipedream. But imagine being able to see some of the genetic differences between people from different regions and time periods. What if you could compare the genetic make-up of Teddy Roosevelt with a 19th-century Chinese farmer? What if you could map patterns of genetic disease and resistance across space and time, and in turn see how this may have impacted other historical areas?

People continue to have a strong fascination with recreating the past. For the vast majority of armchair history enthusiasts, bringing the past to life (whether through a book, exhibit, TV show, movie, etc.) is the magic that keeps them hooked. The prospect of being able to physically connect with past through genetic analysis fundamentally grips people in a way that a traditional monograph has difficulty achieving – see the continued success of PBS’s History Detectives, just starting its sixth season.

However, there remains a general resistance within the hallowed halls of History to precisely these kinds of non-traditional approaches. It seems that time and time again, the impetus for innovation and collaboration in the field comes from outside the academy – from the genealogists, libraries, museums, and public historians who have rolled up their sleeves and plunged into the fray. When academic historians are finally prodded into reacting to these efforts (instead of contributing to them from the start), the results can often be ugly: see the Thomas Jefferson/Sally Hemmings debacle in the late 1990′s. As a result, “real” historians who stand on the sidelines lose the valuable chance to bring their unique skills and perspective to the discussion of how technology such as DNA analysis is utilized for historical research.

Mills Kelly recently wrapped up his three-part series on “Making Digital Scholarship Count”. I think it’s an insightful contribution for a variety of reasons. First, and most important, it addresses a growing problem in the academic world (especially in the field of history). Quite simply, the academy faces two problems: it does not know how to properly define digital scholarship, and it knows even less about how to value digital scholarship. Mills (and the commenters on his series) did a great job describing the situation for a faculty, or even graduate student, perspective. What I’d like to do is give my thoughts on the problem from an undergraduate perspective.

The first issue (defining digital scholarship), while challenging, is in some ways more straight-forward to address. Mills paints a vivid picture of historians as “a fussy and conservative tribe generally resistant to innovation.” From my limited experience of four years in college, I would tend to agree with this assessment. I would not envy the 19 year-old trying to explain to a 65 year-old professor why they completed an analytical paper assignment as a series of photo-blogs. There is a knee-jerk negative reaction to any kind of scholarship that someone doesn’t understand, especially from people who are accustomed to understanding everything. The first trick is to simply provide them with a basic familiarity of the technology involved. If you can clearly convey just what exactly text mining or map mash-ups are, then you can begin to explain how you’ve used it.

The second, more challenging, issue that Mills presents is the heart of the matter: how do you properly value digital scholarship? Mills does a good job of addressing the issue, but I’d like to focus on how an undergraduate student would go about confronting the same issue. There are some major differences from this perspective. Most undergrads are not publishing papers, so the problem of peer-review, journals, etc. is not usually an issue. However, unlike grad students or faculty members, undergrads have a lot less flexibility and independence in choosing how they go about their scholarship. If your U.S. survey professor doesn’t know what a blog is, chances are you won’t even have the opportunity to go down the path of digital history. It takes a phenomenal amount of self-initiative, creativity, and persistence to get the necessary approval from a professor to employ digital tools. Even if a student has built up a personal relationship with a professor, walking into their office and saying “I want to create a VR model of a slave ship instead of writing a term paper” is an intimidating, and for most, laughably implausible scenario.  This first hurdle is enough to discourage the vast majority of students. The remaining fractional few that actually get the approval to pursue a form of digital scholarship then face the same challenges that Mills outlines in making their work “count.”

The historical academy is continuing to train a generation of undergraduate scholars to employ 20th-century tools to wield in a 21st-century landscape. I believe this, more than anything, is the greatest tragedy of mis-valuing digital historical scholarship. At the risk of sounding alarmist, this has the potential for disaster. If teachers cannot connect the subject of history to their students in a relevant, accessible manner, then undecided college or even high-school students will decide to study a subject that does. Within a matter of years, the overwhelming majority of college freshmen will have grown up in front of a computer screen. This simple fact will determine how they learn, study, and solve problems – habits and approaches that will have developed long before they step inside a college classroom. The historical profession’s resistance to adequately understanding and valuing digital scholarship runs the real risk of making history irrelevant to a generation of future scholars.