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Digital History in a Digital Age?

Kemp Family Symposium / Eisenberg Forum Featuring Edward Ayers and Micki Kaufman
Thursday, December 15, 2016
4:00-6:30 PM
1014 Tisch Hall Map
4:00 pm Keynote: “The Adventures of 25 Years in Digital History” (abstract below)
Edward L. Ayers, University of Richmond

5:30 pm U-M Faculty on Digital History
John Carson, Dena Goodman, Kira Thurman, Glenn Tiffert



“Digital History in a Digital Age?” aims to introduce graduate students and faculty to some of the new digital techniques and methods for historical scholarship, centering on the analysis, presentation, and/or teaching of digital data (texts, images, quantitative information, etc.). We see this Kemp Family Symposium/Eisenberg Forum as an excellent venue for bringing some of the leading practitioners of digital history to the History Department and showing off, as well, some of the exciting work already being done at UM by graduate students, faculty, and library digital scholars. We hope that students and faculty will be encouraged to expand their conceptions of teaching and research and to employ some of these digital approaches to pursue fresh questions or old questions in new ways.



“The Adventures of 25 Years in Digital History”

Abstract: Edward Ayers has been involved in digital scholarship since the inception of the Valley of the Shadow Project in the early 1990s. In the years since, he has written books based on the project, co-authored a native digital scholarly article, helped found the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond and co-direct projects there, and chaired a committee for the American Historical Association on the evaluation of digital scholarship in hiring and promotion. In this talk, Ayers will provide an overview of that work and what it can tell us about the evolution of the field.

Ayers was the ninth president of the University of Richmond, where he now serves as Tucker-Boatwright Professor of the Humanities. His awards include being named the National Professor of the Year in 2003, and receiving the National Humanities Medal in 2013. His 1992 book The Promise of the New South was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and his 2003 book, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, won both the Bancroft and Beveridge Prizes.

Ayers is a pioneer in digital history. He has helped found a number of digital history centers, and oversaw the creation of the website “The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War,” one of the fi rst large projects to demonstrate the potential of digital history for both scholars and the general public. Ayers also serves as one of the co-hosts of BackStory with the American History Guys, a nationally syndicated radio show and podcast.

Presented with support from the Kemp Family Foundation, Rackham Mellon Initiative on the Humanities Doctorate in the Twenty-First Century, and Rackham Dean’s Strategic Initiatives Fund.

Image: Carsten Ullrich, “Difference Engine Number 2,” (CC BY-SA 2.0).
Building: Tisch Hall
Event Type: Conference / Symposium
Tags: Graduate, History, Information and Technology, Scholarship, Undergraduate
Source: Happening @ Michigan from Department of History, Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies