Reviewing Digital History: An Introduction

     This assignment had me looking through mainly the American Historical Review (AHR) and see their evolution regarding reviewing digital projects. The first few "background" readings set the stage for these reviews. One of the articles was an interview with Dr. Jeffrey McClurken, an editor for the Journal of American History, and the other was more of a blog post by Dr. Cameron Blevins. While the two articles go into varying topics regarding reviewing digital history projects, I believe the main similarity is that these projects cannot be reviewed like how traditional history research is done. Dr. Blevins does a bit of a better job articulating what he means by giving different categories to reviewing a DH project, which is by pedagogy and public engagement, academic scholarship, and data and design criticism. 

    These categories by Dr. Blevins set a good guideline for what to look for in the later readings, particularly the reading which was one of AHR's first attempts to reviewing DH projects titled "Reviewing Digital History". In this article, I read the first DH review by Joshua Sternfeld. In what I would consider a negative review of the DH project, Dr. Sternfeld criticized the source base that the project, "Digital Harlem", used and questioned if the source base could have swayed visitors of a site to make certain claims about Harlem that are misleading. Sternfeld also criticized the design of the website, and with my personal experience exploring the website, it does seem unfinished, a bit clunky, and is prone to having errors that make you refresh the page. This issue of AHR allowed the principle investigator of "Digital Harlem" to rebuttal against Dr. Sternfeld's criticisms, or at least try to explain some of the flaws. Dr. Robertson, in regards to the source base, claimed that the project had no official claim or idea it was trying to push. Instead, the project acted more as a visual archive that can be used to help with research. He also claimed that the project's design flaws might come from two things. The first is that the website had to pivot from using ARCGIS to web-mapping, since ARCGIS became a bit outdated. The second reason was because this was just the first part of a larger project that would incorporate more sources than just African American legal records, and so this was a stepping stone to something much larger. What I got out of this interaction from 2016 is that DH projects should be transparent about their objectives and limitations. For example, "Digital Harlem" should have somewhere on their website that the project is a work-in-progress, and talk about what they hope to add in the future. They should also explain that the project is more like an archive, and that it is meant for researchers to find sources instead of making connects directly between the sources provided (I cannot articulate this point correctly, but it seemed like Dr. Robertson was hoping that the project was more like an edited collection that a curated list of sources).

    The second batch of AHR reviews I read are more recent, being published in 2020. These reviews are noticeably shorter, however, the criteria for much of the review is similar. The reviewers have just become more concise with their paragraphs. While I did read two reviews, there is one that I will expand upon the most. The first one I read, "Marronage in Saint-Domingue", was a digital history project that took newspaper articles regarding fugitive slaves in modern day Haiti to track maroon colonies on the island. I wish I could explain more about the project, but there is a large barrier. In the review, Dr. Geggus points out that a large amount of the sources are in French and a large portion of the website was in French itself. Now, 4 years later, there is barely any English on the website at all and it relies on Google Translate to help its English users navigate the website. The main review I enjoyed was "Runaway Slaves in Britain". This DH project used newspapers as well to monitor slave activity in Britain. Interestingly, the reviewer points out how the project was used as an archive of sources that helped connect coffeehouses all over Britain into centers of imperialism and capitalism, as many slaveowners would use coffeehouses to spread the work or advertisement of their escaped slaves. The coffeehouses were also places where deals were made to buy and sell slaves. What made this project special was how nice the website was. In regards to Dr. Blevin's "data and design criticism", this project was immaculate. To end off, I think what made this project standout the most was its transparency. It talks about exactly what it is trying to do, which is digitize tens of thousands of newspaper ads about runaway slaves, and it also has a tab that directly shows research that was done with the database. Under the "Other Projects" tab on the website, there is a showcase works that were done in association with the project. One of the more special projects is a Minecraft world called the "Saint Lauretia Minecraft project". This world is also connected to a teaching sources that helps students learn about the slave trade, the middle passage and so much more. This is a wonderful DH project that has a clear goal in mind and is being used to help push historical research, without trying to overstate its objectives.