HIST 390: The Digital Past

HIST 390-DL2: The Digital Past
(Spring 2026)

Online

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Section Information for Spring 2026

This course — which fulfills the university’s Core IT requirement — will teach you the fundamentals of information technology through creative and critical engagement with historical methods and sources. You will engage with legal, ethical, and methodological questions about practicing history in the digital age. Our thematic focus will be on the relationship between technology and the production and dissemination of news, information, misinformation and propaganda in the 20th century. We’ll discuss examples from World War I, World War II, Nazi Germany, and the Cold War, while addressing the profound impact of digital technologies on the media landscape in the past decades, including the development of AI.  Through learning by doing, you will gain and apply analytical and technical skills that will be useful for your university education and professional career. This includes strategies and tools that help us to with locating and evaluating online content; an introduction to copyrights and ethical frameworks; basics of audio editing and production; web publishing; and digital preservation.

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.