Hacking History - Towards a Digital History of Latin America

Weekly Schedule

Jan. 7, 2019: What is digital history and why do it?

In-Class:

• Introductions
• Introduction to Digital History
  • DH project examples
  • DH project assignment
• Practice with:
  • Slack
  • Google Sites or other website service
  • csvs
  • rawgraphs
  • install and set up Python

Assignments Due:

• set up Slack channel account

Jan. 14, 2019: Remembering Latin America in a Digital World

In-Class:

• DH project presentations
• What is Latin America? Why is it important?
• discuss readings
  • Cairo - inspiration for Historical Viewpoints sketches
• Demo: programming for historical research
• Tutorial: Python strings, numbers, files, lists, dictionaries, and data frames

Assignments Due:

• Digital History Projects Assignment
• José Ragas, “Beyond Big Brother”
• Reid, Ch. 1
• Cairo, Preface and Introduction
• Lara Putnam, “The Transnational and the Text-Searchable: Digitized Sources and the Shadows they Cast”
• work on website (but only if time allows)

Jan. 21, 2019 - NO Class

Jan. 28, 2019 - Latin America: Myths v. Reality

In-Class:

• review with Python lists and practice with Python dictionaries
• begin with Python data frames (Pandas) - basic examples
• discuss different historical approaches to Latin American history
  • dependency theory, neoliberalism, etc….
  • historical viewpoints sketches
• Towards a quantitative history of Latin America: separating myths from reality
  • the problems behind the numbers
  • but also the value
• working with country-level data: what different types of questions can you ask?
• tutorial: Python data frames, working with World Bank data

Assignments Due:

• Historical Viewpoints Sketch
• Python programming assignment
• Reid, Ch. 2
• Galeano, Foreword and Introduction (Blackboard)
• Grandin, Introduction (Blackboard)

Feb. 4, 2019: Working with Quantitative Data

In-Class:

• discuss data and research questions for Quantitative Data Analysis project
• how quantitative data can also mislead or deceive (Cairo)
• Python: working with data frames
  • movie database
  • data summaries

Assignments Due:

• Cairo, Ch. 1 - 3
• Quantitative Data Analysis project step 1 (click here for more info): identify data variables and craft research question(s) and plan

Feb. 11, 2019: Working with Quantitative Data II

• discuss Cairo, Ch. 1-5
• assessing quantitative historical data
• Python: working with dataframes
  • World Bank and other country-level data
  • preliminary visualizations with within and beyond Python

Assignments Due:

• Python-Pandas dataframe assignment: Complete the exercises and submit your answers to your instructor.
• Cairo, Ch. 4-5
• Begin reading your scholarly articles for your Quantitative Data Analysis project

Feb. 18, 2019 - NO CLASS

• Practice Session, Tues, Feb 19 (3pm Leavey Library?)
• Guide to creating some basic data visualizations within and beyond Python

Feb. 25, 2019: Slavery - Quantitative vs. Qualitative Histories

In-Class:

• excerpts from a slave narrative
• Why are some histories remembered? Others forgotten?
• presentation: maps and history
• discussion
• demo: data visualization of WB data in Python, continued
• work on data visualizations with rawgraphs or within Python
• install QGIS

Assignments Due:

• Latin American in the World: Quantitative Data First Draft with Data Visualization Due 2/25
• Eltis and Richardson, Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Read the Introduction, Part IV, and Afterword. (Blackboard)
• Reséndez, The Other Slavery. Read the Introduction. Chapter 1 as well if you have time. (Blackboard)
• The chart that sparked a debate about global poverty

Mar 4: What Historical Narratives and Data Conceal and How They Mislead

In-Class:

• presentation: problems of historical data and texts
• discuss:
  • forgotten or hidden historical narratives (Trouillot)
  • how conventional and digital history can address those erasures (Mikecz)
• demo: mapping slave voyages data OR country data
  • QGIS setup
  • projections
  • base maps
  • country layer(s)
  • display country data

Assignments Due:

• Latin American in the World: Quantitative Data Final Paper Due 3/6
• Trouillot, Preface, Ch. 1 - 3

Week of Mar 11: SPRING BREAK

Mar 18: Mapping Zones of Resistance

In-Class:

• Resistance in an age of data surveillance
  • Why the Underground Railroad may not be possible today (and connections to border enforcement)
• Spaces of Resistance in the Americas
• Discuss Final Projects
  • examples of exemplary data visualizations (in Cairo and elsewhere)
  • a list of some examples
• Demo: QGIS continued (QGIS tutorial 3)
  • continue mapping country data

Assignments Due:

• Complete QGIS tutorials 1 and 2 (for those who missed the last class)
• Trouillot, FINISH
• only if time allows: Anne Knowles, “GIS and History” (available on Blackboard)

March 25: Visualizing New World Encounters

In Class:

• Tutorial
  • QGIS
    • create vectors (points, lines, polygons)

  • Inkscape

• Exploration:
  • Digital History tools

Assignments Due:

• Present Final Project Step 1: Proposal + Preliminary Sketch
• Finish Knowles (Blackboard)
• Rowe, “The Inca Civil War…” (Blackboard)
• Maeve Kane, “All One People and under One King”

April 1: Urbanization

In Class:

• QGIS tutorial: georeferencing historical maps
• New Tool Presentations

Assignments Due:

• Final Project Step 2: New Tool Presentation
• Knowles, et al. Geographies of the Holocaust, Intro, Ch. 5, and Ch. 7 (Blackboard)
• NYT city segregation maps
• look through Stanford’s gallery of Spatial History projects on Rio de Janeiro (i.e. there are projects on slave markets, occupations, housing, and disease in Rio).
• Cairo, Ch. 10
• Extra Credit: Read and prepare a brief (5 min) presentation on one of the following articles/chapters (all on *Blackboard):
  • Scott, “The High Modernist City” from Seeing like a State or
  • Voekel, “Peeing on the Palace.” or
  • Zephyr Frank and Whitney Berry, “The Slave Market in Rio de Janeiro circa 1869,” in Journal of Latin American Geography (2010) (on Blackboard, which goes with the slave market project on the Stanford website - see above)

April 8: Text Analysis & Mining

In Class:

• Topics in Digital History Presentations (for extra credit OR absence make-up)
• Obama speech activity
• Demonstration: Text Analysis and Mining
  • State of the Union speeches
  • Old Bailey website
• Tutorial: Working with texts in Python
  • basic text analysis
  • begin with the Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK)

Assignments Due:

• read one of the following:
  • de León, The Land of Open Graves (2015), Chapters 1 and 2 (Find the digital copy of this book on USC Libraries and select “Ebook Central University Press” to read online)
  • Hoffnung, Chapter 1 + one other chapter of your choice (if you have this book)

• Google Books’ effort to Scan Millions of Books

• Choose one of the following three projects to read about:
  • The Old Bailey Project (digitized London trial proceedings from 1674 - 1913):
    • As the Gavels Fell: 240 Years at Old Bailey
    • Old Bailey article (Blackboard)
  • Text-Mining the State of the Union
    • The Language of the State of the Union
    • Counting Words in the State of the Union Address
  • Big Data and Constitutions
    • read this short blog post first
    • then read the article (Blackboard: 12_Rockmore_CultEvol_Constitutions.pdf)
• Mini-Assignment: Do your own text-mining by playing with Google’s Ngram Viewer or Google Trends to uncover interesting trends in humans’ use of words. Choose a few terms to compare in one of these tools. After some exploration, choose a term or set of terms whose patterns appear particularly revealing or surprising. Share what you learned in class.
  • Google’s Ngram Viewer allows you to search for the use of single words and ngrams (groups of two, three, four words) across millions(?) of books published between 1800 and 2008.
  • Google Trends allows you to search the frequency of Google web searches from 2004 to the present. You may also refine your search by country.
  • If you’re interested in reading about some potential problems applying these tools to the study of society, read What Can We Learn from the Epic Failure of Google Flu Trends

April 15: Texts & Mobilities

In Class:

• Discuss:
  • Readings
  • Annotated Bibliographies + Contributions / Argument
• Demonstration:
  • Text-mining book reviews
  • Text-Mining Projects
  • Python NLTK and web-scraping
  • Hathi tools
• Tutorial
  • Python NLTK (continued)
  • web-scraping??

Assignments Due:

• Final Project Step 3: Annotated Bibliography + Your Contributions Paper
• Readings:
  • TBA: Digital Text-Mining readings
  • de León, Chapters TBA

April 22: Migrations / Being Human in a Digital World

In Class:

• Discuss
  • readings
  • migration and digital tools as threats and aid
  • reflections on being human in a digital world
• Demonstration
  • QGIS / Inkscape / Python: combining tools to create a vivid and informational data visualization
  • NLTK (if time allows)

Assignments Due:

• OPTIONAL Final Project Step 4: Submit partial first draft by April 29
• bring data visualization sketches back for further discussion
• migrations and data readings:
  • Bedoya “Big Data and the Undergound Railroad”
  • The Guardian: ‘Surveillance Society’ - has technology at the US-Mexico border gone too far?
  • The Problem with a ‘smart’ border wall
• Facial recognition is almost perfectly accurate - here’s why that could be a problem
• Yau, “Explorations of People Movements”

April 29: EXAM WEEK - optional help session at location to be determined

May 6: Submit Final Project by Midnight