Students and faculty who want to make interactive maps, create professional websites, or use digital tools in the classroom have a new resource available: the department’s Digital History Lab (DHL). Housed in Hamilton Hall, the DHL offers both individual support and workshops to help students and faculty master new technologies.
Last year, Business Manager Jennifer Parker and other department staff members conceived of a lab run by graduate students and recent graduates. Faculty and graduate students were immediately enthusiastic. “We’ve had a tremendous opportunity to build something pretty cool,” says Dr. Gabe Moss, a mapping specialist and DHL co-director.
Moss and the two other co-directors, Dr. Garrett Wright and Emma Rothberg, encourage students and faculty to reach out for assistance, even if they are only in the early stages of a project. “Some of them have very clear ideas about what they want to implement or integrate into their classroom or research, and others don’t have specific ideas. Those tend to be brainstorming sessions,” explained Wright. “We talk about various tools you could use, and sometimes it’s simply a matter of putting you in touch with the right librarians or other people on campus.”
The DHL co-directors also help professors approach assignments and assessments in new ways. In the fall, Wright worked with Dr. Jerma Jackson, who asked students in her History 385 class to create a wiki (a collaborative online encyclopedia) about African American women’s history for their final project. New DHL co-director and current graduate student Emma Rothberg is helping with an ongoing project with Dr. Katherine Turk’s course, History 179H: Women in the History of UNC-Chapel Hill.
“They were creating an exhibit to go up in Wilson Library, and we approached Dr. Turk asking if she would let us take the information that the class had compiled and put it onto a walking tour,” Rothberg said. When the project is finished, users will be able to follow an interactive map to learn about women’s history at the university.
Rothberg, Wright, and Moss all have previous digital humanities experience, and they bring their own expertise to the DHL’s training offerings. In October, Moss, an expert in ancient history, ran a mapmaking workshop that drew participants from across the university and the broader community.
Indeed, while the DHL focuses on serving members of the Department of History, the co-directors also find ways to bring digital humanities to the public. Currently, Moss, Rothberg, and Wright are planning a “Teaching History in the Digital Age” conference for university, community college, and high school educators across the Triangle. They also host transcribe-a-thons, where participants help digitize historical records so that students, scholars, and genealogists around the world can more easily use them. So far, the DHL has hosted events to transcribe records from American soldiers in World War II, nineteenth-century antislavery manuscripts, and advertisements for escaped enslaved people.
As instructors moved their classes online during the COVID-19 crisis, Moss, Rothberg, and Wright adapted the services they provide. Now, they host online office hours three times per week, providing support to faculty members who need to quickly learn how to integrate digital tools.
For those looking to learn history while social distancing, the DHL co-directors host a podcast called The Lens. Their guests are Department of History professors and graduate students who discuss pop culture from a historian’s perspective. So far, episodes have ranged from military historian Dr. Wayne Lee discussing the award-winning film World War I film 1917 to medievalist graduate student Daniel Morgan analyzing the hit HBO series Game of Thrones. You can find recent episodes of The Lens online at https://digitalhistorylab.unc.edu/podcast/.
For Rothberg, Moss, and Wright, the recent need to transition instruction and research online emphasizes the importance of digital humanities. “I think it is now a vital tool for historians—and I think that was true before we all got locked in our houses and had to figure out a way to work and teach,” Moss said. “There are so many cool things you can do when you combine the traditional standards and evidence and practices that historians do with processing power, with new technology, with a sort of open sharing of information.”