Doing History Online
This class, we began by discussing the differences between HTML and XML. This introduced the idea of source code and how to view the source code in different boundaries. We also looked at scans of a letter dated from the Civil War. Mostly, though, we discussed the way that historians think and how it differs from other areas of academia, and the advantages and disadvantages of digital history.
When historians think about the past, they do so differently than most of the general public. For instance, they are unconcerned with bias because they understand no history can be completely objective. Additionally, they tend to focus on a single period or moment so their studies can be immersive, for they hate to generalize. They also prefer complexity because they see history as multi-causal, and centered around humans. Lastly, they use narrative storytelling as a way to convey historical knowledge.
For me, the historical thinking strategy that is most different and unfamiliar to me is the historian view of bias. Throughout high school, I was taught to investigate for any potential bias an author of a document may have had. Teachers time and time again told me that this bias was something to look upon negatively, as a hindrance of the author’s ability to convey factual historical events. In the historian mindset, though, bias is an accepted part of history. An author’s bias is not seen as a weakness, but simply as one of the many points of view history can have. Like I mentioned before, history can never be completely objective. This idea was not introduced to me until I left high school, and it makes analyzing documents a lot more productive because it allows for the author’s point of view to become an other area of analysis instead of something to be worked around.