The development of information technologies and the rise of the digital humanities have opened new, exciting avenues for historical research and for the engagement of historians with the public. History and the digital have intersected in ways that, first, reconfigure historical research through the extensive digitization of sources and the creation of computational tools to process historical data (“digital history”); second, offer a wealth of new objects for historical research (“historicizing the digital”). Accordingly, the course proposes not only to survey the main computational approaches and methods that can be used to study history, but also, drawing on a series of case studies from the history of science and technology, to critically reflect on what it means to think digitally. Students develop small-group projects in digital history and document their research in a final paper.
