Technology and the Historian
Cloth: 04/13/2021
About the Book
Historians have seen their field transformed by the digital age. Research agendas, teaching and learning, scholarly communication, the nature of the archive—all have undergone a sea change that in and of itself constitutes a fascinating digital history. Yet technology's role in the field's development remains a glaring blind spot among digital scholars.Adam Crymble mines private and web archives, social media, and oral histories to show how technology and historians have come together. Using case studies, Crymble merges histories and philosophies of the field, separating issues relevant to historians from activities in the broader digital humanities movement. Key themes include the origin myths of digital historical research; a history of mass digitization of sources; how technology influenced changes in the curriculum; a portrait of the self-learning system that trains historians and the problems with that system; how blogs became a part of outreach and academic writing; and a roadmap for the continuing study of history in the digital era.
About the Author
Adam Crymble is an editor of Programming Historian and a lecturer of digital humanities at University College London.Reviews
"Recommended." --Choice"Crymble gives me a greater appreciation for how my own course in 'digital history' fits within and reflects broader patterns of discourse about technology and the past." --Corinthian Matters
"Crymble seamlessly integrates print, digital, oral history, and interactive source material to document the ways historians have responded, both individually and as an imagined community, to the social contexts that have shaped our interactions with technology." --Journal of American History
"Crymble's work provides an insightful historiographical examination of how computer technology has been impacted in various practices pertaining to the field of history. This book merits attention from students, researchers, and practitioners of the historical profession, as it serves as a salient reminder that technology has long pervaded, transformed, and continually shaped every dimension of our discipline." --Middle Ground Journal
Blurbs
"This book explodes many of the foundation myths upon which digital history has been built and replaces them with a clear-eyed account that melds historiography, technology, and pedagogy. In beautiful prose, Crymble has identified the streams of influence that have shaped the field."--Tim Hitchcock, University of Sussex
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