Doing history in hypertext

Journal of the Association for History and Computing

Volumn 7, Issue 2, 2004, Pages

  Robertson, Stephen ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 22944457504     PISSN: 19375905     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (68)

1. For an example of my on-line syllabi, and for the use of Internet sources in my teaching, see "Childhood and Youth in Modern America," at http://teaching.arts. usyd.edu.au/history/2044 30 August 2004.
2. This concept is similar to that proposed by Robert Darnton, although I imagined a denser web of two-way links where Darnton saw a pyramid. See Robert Darnton, "The New Age of the Book," The New York Review of Books (18 March, 1999), at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/546 30 August 2004, and the discussion of Darnton later in this article.
3. The properties of hypertext are discussed in more detail in the next section of this article.
4. Women and Social Movements in the United States, at http://womhist. binghamton.edu/ 30 August 2004.
5. See Kathryn Kish Sklar, "Teaching Students to Become Producers of New Historical Knowledge on the Web," Journal of American History, 88 (March 2002): 1471-76 http://chswg.binghamton.edu/ sklararticle.htm 30 August 2004;
6. and Thomas Dublin and Kathryn Kish Sklar, "Democratizing Student Learning: The 'Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1820-1940' Web Project at SUNY Binghamton," History Teacher, 35 (February 2002): 163-73 http://chswg.binghamton.edu/historyteacher.htm 30 August 2004.
7. In that regard, this article differs from the small amount of existing scholarship about courses intended to teach students to produce hypertext history, which offer few details about the projects that students produced, or examples of what hypertext history might look like. See Arne Solli, "Hypertext 'Papers' on the Web: Students Confront the Linear Tradition," in History.edu: Essays on Teaching with Technology, eds. Dennis Trinkle and Scott Merriman (Armonk, NY, 2001), 38-51;
8. Daniel Pfeifer, "Linking History with Hypertext: Rethinking the Process," in History. edu, 52-59.
9. "American History on the World Wide Web," at http://teaching.arts.usyd.edu.au/ history/hsty3080
10. Identifying the sources that would form the basis of that project was one of the goals of a seminar the students had completed in the previous semester. See "American History on the World Wide Web," at http://www-personal. arts.usvd.edu. au/sterobrt/3079/. For the first three weeks of this course, the class worked with the primary sources the students had chosen. The discussions focused on how to read different types of sources, on identifying what needed explanation in a source - people, places, references, language, appearance, style - and on identifying contexts for sources.
11. See "Schedule,' at http://www-personal.arts.usyd.edu.au/sterobrt/ 3079/schedule. htm.
12. George Landow, Hypertext 2.0 (Baltimore, 1997);
13. Vannevar Bush, "As We May Think," Atlantic Monthly (July 1945), at http://www.ps.uni-sb.de/-duchier/pub/ vbush/vbush.shtml 30 August 2004;
14. Jerome McGann, "The Rationale of Hypertext," at http://www.village.virginia.edu/public/jjm2f/rationale.html 30 August 2004;
15. Christopher Keep, Tim McLaughlin, and Robin Parmar, "Hypertext Terminology," at http://eserver.org/elab/hfl0036.html 30 August 2004.
16. For another useful introduction to hypertext, see Jay David Boulter, Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print, 2nd ed. (Mahwah, NJ, 2001).
17. Landow, 3-4.
18. Ibid, 5-6, 64-65, 70, 76-77, 79-80, 85-88.
19. Ibid, 24-25, 83
20. Ibid, 71.
21. McGann.
22. Janet Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (Cambridge, Mass., 1998);
23. Espen Aarseth, "Nonlinearity and Literary Theory," in Hyper / Text / Theory, ed. George Landow (Baltimore, 1994), 51 -86;
24. Christopher Keep, Tim McLaughlin, and Robin Parmar, "Writing and Reading Electronic Hypertexts," at http://eserver.org/elab/hfl0223.html 30 August 2004
25. Murray, 65-68 (quote on 67)
26. Ibid, 71 -94 (quotes on 71, 79, 84, 87).
27. Darnton, at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/546;
28. Edward Ayers, "History in Hypertext," at http://vcdh.virginia. edu/Ayers.OAH.html 30 August 2004;
29. Edward Ayers, "The Pasts and Futures of Digital History,' at http://vcdh.Virginia.edu/ PastsFutures.html 30 August 2004;
30. Randy Bass, "Can American Studies find a Whole in the Net?" at http://www.georgetown.edu/crossroads/guide/asins96.html 30 August 2004;
31. Carl Smith, "Can You Do Serious History on the Web?" AHA Perspectives Online (February 1998), at http://www.historians.org/perspectives/ issues/1998/9802/9802COM.CFM 30 August 2004.
32. Darnton, at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/546 (30 August 2004).
33. A similar criticism could be made of another of the texts that the students read, Smith, at http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/1998/ 9802/9802COM.CFM.
34. Ayers, "History in Hypertext," at http://vcdh.virginia.edu/ Ayers.OAH.html 30 August 2004.
35. Since the course was taught, Ayers has offered another vision of hypertext history in conjunction with the publication of an article he co-authored with William Thomas. See William G. Thomas III and Edward Ayers, "An Overview: The Differences Slavery Made: A Close Analysis of Two American Communities," American Historical Review 108, 5 (December 2003): 1299-1307.
36. "Hypertext Scholarship in American Studies," at http://chnm.gmu.edu/ag/ 30 August 2004.
37. For two other examples of online articles, see Philip J. Ethington, "Los Angeles and the Problem of Urban Historical Knowledge," AHR 105 (December 2000), http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/history/historylab/LAPUHK/ 30 August 2004;
38. and Robert Darnton, "An Early Information Society: News and Media in Eighteenth-Century Paris," AHR 105 (February 2000), http:// historycooperative.press.uiuc.edu/journals/ahr/105.1/ah000001.html
39. . Since the course Ayers and Thomas have published a more fully hypertextual online article, although their effort to fully employ the properties of the medium was ultimately "tamed by peer review." See William G. Thomas III and Edward Ayers, "The Differences Slavery Made: A Close Analysis of Two American Communities," at http://www.vcdh.virginia. edu/AHR/.
40. The quote is from Thomas and Ayers, "An Overview," 1305.
41. Thomas Thurston, "Hearsay of the Sun: Photography, Identity, and the Law of Evidence in Nineteenth-Century American Courts," at http://chnm.gmu.edu/aq/ photos/index.htm 30 August 2004.
42. James Castonguay, "The Spanish-American War in US Media Culture," at http://chnm.gmu.edu/aq/war/index.html 30 August 2004;
43. David Westbrook, "From Hogan's Alley to Coconino County: Three Narratives of the Early Comic Strip," at http://chnm.gmu.edu/aq/comics/ index.html 30 August 2004.
44. Louise Krasniewicz and Michael Blitz, "Dreaming Arnold Schwarzenegger," at http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/ioa/arnold/arnoldwebpages/ arnold.htm 30 August 2004;
45. Roy Rosenzweig, "Crashing the System?: Hypertext and Scholarship on American Culture," American Quarterly 51, 2 (1999): 241;
46. Louise Krasniewicz and Michael Blitz, "Why We Did Not Produce "Dreaming Arnold Schwarzenegger" as a Book, Several Articles, an Encyclopedia, a Video, an Annotated Bibliography, and a Museum Installation (or Did We?)," American Quarterly 51, 2 (1999): 259, 260.
47. Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture, at http://jefferson.village. virginia.edu/ utc/sitemap.html;
48. Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary Online, at http://www. dohistory.org/ 30 August 2004;
49. Doug Linder, Famous Trials, at http://www.law. umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ ftrials/ftrials.htm 30 August 2004;
50. Rebecca Edwards and Sarah DeFeo, 1896: The Presidential Election, at http://projects.vassar. edu/1896/1896home.html 30 August 2004.
51. "University of Sydney Department of Arts Informatics," at http://www.arts.usyd. edu.au/departs/informatics/default.shtml 30 August 2004.
52. "American History on the World Wide Web Projects," at http://teaching.arts. usvd.edu.au/history/hstv3080/projects2.html 30 August 2004.
53. All quotations are taken from student responses to my survey, and are used with the student's permission.
54. "How to Use This Site," at http://teaching.arts. usyd.edu.au/history/hsty3080/3rdYr3080/3080site/how%20to 30 August 2004.
55. I b i d.
56. "The Nine Lives of Richard Nixon," at http://teaching.arts. usyd.edu.au/history/ hsty3080/StudentWebSites/Nixon%20Obits/Homepage 30 August 2004.
57. "Explanatory Notes," at http://teaching.arts.usyd.edu.au/ history/hsty3080/ StudentWebSites/Nixon%20Obits/Comments.html 30 August 2004.
58. The accounts of Nixon's career, for example, discuss how each period is treated in the obituaries, and in historical writing generally, and offer only a few details of the actual events or their broader context.
59. 35"Dizzy Gillespie's The Cult of Bebop1'," at http://teaching.arts.usyd.edu.au/history/hsty3080/3rdYr3080/Dizzy/ DIZZY%20WEB%20l/entry.html 30 August 2004.
60. "Photos from the Triangle Factory Fire," at http://teaching.arts.usyd.edu.au/ history/hsty3080/3rdYr3080/trianglewebsite/ index.html 30 August 2004.
61. For other sites that coupled multiple pathways with traditional writing, see "Grassy Knoll," at http://teaching.arts.usyd.edu.au/history/ hsty3080/3rdYr3080/ frames/ind.html. 30 August 2004;
62. and "The 1992 LA Riots," at http://teaching.arts. usyd.edu.au/history/hsty3080/3rdYr3080/www%20project/main 1 30 August 2004.
63. "Mafia Monograph," at http://teaching.arts.usyd.edu.au/history/ hsty3080/ StudentWebSites/CreateWeb3/index.htm 30 August 2004;
64. "Little Rock, Arkansas, September 23-24, 1957," at http://teaching.arts.usyd.edu.au/history/ hsty3080/3rdYr3080/ClementHSTY3080/ Home.html 30 August 2004.
65. "The Louisiana Purchase," at http://teaching.arts.usyd.edu.au/ history/ hsty3080/3rdYr3080/Louisiana/home.htm 30 August 2004;
66. "The Truth is Stranger Than Fiction," at http://teaching.arts. usyd.edu.au/history/hsty3080/3rdYr3080/IranContra/Design/Index2.htm 30 August 2004.
67. "The Cuban Missile Crisis," at http://teaching.arts.usyd.edu. au/history/ hsty3080/3rdYr3080/Cuban/index.html 30 August 2004.
68. "Clio Wired: The Syllabus," at http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/rr/ f03/cw/syll.html 30 August 2004.