HIST 395: Topics in Digital History
HIST 395-001: Fairfax Court History Project
(Fall 2025)
04:30 PM to 07:10 PM T
Innovation Hall 333
Section Information for Fall 2025
This course involves students in making the records of the Fairfax County Circuit Court from 1950 available to the public. The court docket included both criminal and civil cases, so the course will explore topics ranging from murder, housebreaking, forgery, drunk driving, and animal cruelty to divorce, debt, and disputes over land and business activity. Reading records of the court’s work, students will learn to identify archival practices, to analyze legal sources, and to interpret legal history.
Students will create a catalog of cases by combining information from a variety of records of those involved in a legal action, its details, and its outcome, in the process learning how to evaluate legal information, create and describe data, and publish it on a digital platform. To explain those cases, students will read historical scholarship on suburbanization, segregation, crime and policing, and civil rights, and do research in sources such as census records and local newspapers. They will use those sources to create narratives that analyze the details of cases and relate them to life in the expanding suburbs that are central to understanding the postwar United States.
HIST 395-001 is enrollment controlled. Please contact Dr. Stephen Robertson at srober30@gmu.eduto register.
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Course Information from the University Catalog
Credits: 3
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.