HIST 390: The Digital Past

HIST 390-DL3: The Digital Past
(Fall 2025)

Online

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Section Information for Fall 2025

In this class, you will to learn to do history using digital tools. The course—which satisfies the Mason Core IT requirement—teaches the fundamentals of information technology by applying them to practical problems in history. Throughout the semester, you will work individually and with classmates on a series of projects about American history during the period of Reconstruction. You will learn how to do research online, but also how to put those sources in the context of other scholarly work. You will gather data, learn how to question it, analyze it, summarize it, and interpret it. You will create visualizations of datasets, including maps. You will learn how to present visual and textual sources online in web exhibits, and you will learn how to write and publish effectively online. You will use generative AI in a responsible way. Through learning by doing, you will gain both digital skills and the skills of a historian. This combination will be useful to you throughout your university career and in your future work. The topics we are learning—digital literacy, and the complex of issues around race, politics, and economics tied to the history of Reconstruction—are now more than ever vital to understanding and participating in American democracy.

This is an online asynchronous section.

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Course Information from the University Catalog

Credits: 3

Teaches the fundamentals of information technology within the context of a history course. Students learn fundamentals and skills as well as how our society became so enamored of and dependent on these knowledge and information tools. Understanding a new technology requires understanding how new technologies transform the societies that embrace them. Emphasizes the use of free and open-source software whenever possible. Offered by History & Art History. Limited to three attempts.
Mason Core: Mason Core, Info Tech & Computing
Schedule Type: Lecture
Grading:
This course is graded on the Undergraduate Regular scale.

The University Catalog is the authoritative source for information on courses. The Schedule of Classes is the authoritative source for information on classes scheduled for this semester. See the Schedule for the most up-to-date information and see Patriot web to register for classes.