Posted on

Who’s writing history? An analysis on the demographics of authorship in history journals

Option #1

For my print project I would like to focus on analyzing the makeup of published authors in history journals, such as the Journal of American History. After completing an article analysis for my research seminar, I was reminded how little diversity there was in authorship in academic articles. With this project I would like to create some kind of data visualization that shows the makeup in authorship of history journals, ideally focusing on one.

I have a lot of options in terms of what kinds of things I could use as data.  Some of the data is more readily available, whereas other data I would have to go looking for myself like race and gender identity. When I first imagined this project, I wanted to focus primarily on race and gender as a data point but I am also open to other data points that may be more easily accessible such as job title and academic affiliation or institution. In order to successfully complete this project, I would need a software to input all of my data that can create the type of visualization that I decide. Right now I’m thinking that a bar chart could be a good idea but I’m also looking for more creative options as well. The written part, of course, would consist of my analysis of the demographics of authorship and how that impacts the discipline as a whole.

Option #2

I also have an alternative option where datasets may already exist or would be more easily attainable. Another proposition I have is to analyze keywords or topics of articles in a historical journal and then create a frequency chart or table for the data. There are two ways I can approach this: I can search for data that already exists and put it into some kind of data visualization or use a program that allows me to collect my own data.

For this project I would focus on a singular journal, but I would like to cover at least two to four year’s worth of issues in my analysis. I am open to suggestions about a program that would be able to read all my articles and detect the keywords I’m looking for, so if anybody has any input I would greatly appreciate it. Once I had the data and created a data visualization, I would then write up an analysis, similar to the idea in my first proposal.

Credit: Diversifying history: A large-scale analysis of changes in researcher demographics and scholarly agendas . Risi S, Nielsen MW, Kerr E, Brady E, Kim L, et al. (2022) Diversifying history: A large-scale analysis of changes in researcher demographics and scholarly agendas. PLOS ONE 17(1): e0262027. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262027

I have done a preliminary search of projects that have done similar things to what I’m hoping to do as a guide to help me understand what methods work best and how to structure my analysis around a particular data set. One of the examples that I found really helpful will be linked here and a some graphs from the article can be seen above.

As always, I would love to hear any suggestions, comments, or questions people have about my proposals.

Ava

Posted on

Defining Digital History

Week of January 25 Reading Response

This week we’re reading about what digital history is and how both historians and the public interact with it. Daniel J. Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig published their book, Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web, in 2005. Their book is the first of its kind, providing accessible descriptions of how various people might use the internet and technology to make, learn, and present history. Ultimately they argue that it is a historian’s job to navigate and interpret this new world of digital history. Cohen and Rosenzweig are referenced repeatedly throughout this week’s readings, and the newer works build upon the ideas they discuss in their book and other articles.

With the increased development of digital history, accessibility in the field has also increased. Cohen and Rosenzweig note that digitized archives allow more people to access primary source material that would otherwise not be available to them. Each of the authors this week seem to agree that this increased accessibility is positive, but it also raises some concerns for historians. Quality and authenticity are two words that appear in several of our texts this week. What examples do you see in our reading that address quality and authenticity? What are some suggestions given to remedy these concerns and do you think they are effective?

With increased accessibility of digital history, there can be a lot of drawbacks. Rebecca Onion’s article addresses concerns of authenticity in the Twitter world. History photo accounts are notorious for posting uncredited and no context images to their accounts. The most egregious posting doctored photos trying to pass them off as real, but there are other places on the internet where history can be accessible, authentic, and quality. Edson’s article discusses the rise of the Vlog Brothers who have changed the way many consume and present content online. The Green brothers are responsible for the youtube channel, Crash Course, which gives a rundown of various educational topics ranging from biology to history. As someone who used to watch crash course history in middle and high school, this is an encouraging example of quality, accessible history content.

There is a lot of history content on the web written by a variety of different people, but some historians worry that this general accessibility can impact the quality of the content we see. Wikipedia allows any registered user to edit or create content on their site. In his article, “Can History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past”, Rosenzweig notes the benefits and drawbacks of the site. Web users worldwide turn to Wikipedia first over many other online sources and encyclopedias. Wikipedia has become an invaluable tool for both scholars and amateur historians to produce historical writing for a public audience. Wikipedia also encourages collaboration among users, something which is rare for the discipline. Instead of a singular author working on an article, a single article could be worked on by any number of people, all volunteers. Collaboration is another common theme that we can see in our readings this week. Guiliano, Leon, and Cohen and Rosenzweig, want to take a collaborative approach to teaching and writing history.

While digital history was born out of collaboration there is also the concern of giving appropriate credit to everyone who contributed to a project. Leon writes that this lack of crediting each contributor hurts women and people of color most of all. Women’s research is consistently less cited than research conducted by men. This creates a ripple effect that impacts all aspects of a female historians career. Requirements for tenure track positions often fail to recognize the significance of digital history scholarship and digital methods are often ignored when considering bodies of scholarship that would qualify one for tenure. This leads to an imbalance of female professors with job security which prevents women with the flexibility to pursue projects like digital histories.

I want to call attention to two quotes from our texts:

“The primary connection between analog and digital that grounds this book is the belief that what makes it into our histories is a statement of our values and positions as individuals and as historians” (Jennifer Guiliano, A Primer for Teaching Digital History, introduction).

“In selecting (and excluding) material, a historian makes an argument about what sources are important for understanding a topic. Creating a digital collection further elaborates an argument through the organization, categorization, and description of sources, as well as the design of an interface for presenting and accessing them” (Robertson, et. al., Digital History and Argument, 4).

How do you interpret these quotes in relation to each other? Try to figure out why I would put these quotes side by side.

As we have read this week, digital history can be many different things, and can be done by many different people. History is important not only because it tells us about our past, but because it teaches critical thinking skills which is something this world needs now more than ever.

Ava

Posted on

Introducing myself

Hello!

I’d like to reach a point in my writing where I feel like I can be vulnerable, and I figure this is as good of place as any to do that. I have a confession: I hate when other people read my writing. I love presenting projects, but showing someone my written work is scary. So, here it is for all to see, judge, and hopefully enjoy. This kind of vulnerability is what I am hoping to get out of our course this spring. In addition to learning about digital history methods, I want to learn about myself as a scholar, writer, and historian.

Before I get too far ahead of myself, I should probably share a little bit about me. My name is Ava Griswold and I am in my first year of the general history M.A. program at American University. I earned my undergraduate degree in history and French at a small historically women’s college called St. Catherine University in my home state of Minnesota. I’ve worked with a variety of historical topics, most of my major papers and projects have focused on the unique experiences of women. I have a particular affinity to studying 19th century American women. Some of my favorite topics include women in the early suffrage movement, women and new religions, and how women have taken on leadership roles. If you’re really curious on what all I’ve done in the past, just look at my LinkedIn.

What are you going to do with that? I get asked this question often by my friends and family and strangers who find out I’m getting a master’s degree. Well, I’ll tell you (and perhaps refer others to this post so I can stop repeating myself at every holiday gathering). My ultimate goal is to write a book, maybe several books. I want to be a published scholar, and expert in my field, a true historian. This means that I will be needing a PhD in history, which also means I will likely be working in some kind of academic setting (hopefully incorporating some of the skills and technologies from this course). After I finish my master’s degree I will take a year or two off from school to work and apply to PhD programs (it’s also nice to just have a break). I don’t know exactly what I’ll do after my PhD, but hope that I can work in some kind of research capacity. Oh, and write that book I mentioned.

Let’s return to the idea of vulnerability. I’d like to expand upon this and add the idea of authenticity , which goes hand in hand with being vulnerable . I think both of these traits are necessary for us as scholars and people to have. Share your work the way you want to. Use your own voice and use it with confidence. This is your formal invitation to be vulnerable and authentic with your posts on this blog and beyond. We all are finding our voice and our passions and I encourage you to be gentle with yourself and others in this period of exploration. I look forward to learning more about each one of you and hope we can take advantage of this online community to work towards becoming the kind of scholars we want to be.

Ava