HIST 697: Data Analysis for History

HIST 697-001: Creating History in New Media
(Spring 2020)

07:20 PM to 10:00 PM M

Music Theater Building 1008

Section Information for Spring 2020

In this course you will learn to use computational methods to create historical arguments. You will work with historical data, including finding, gathering, manipulating, analyzing, visualizing, and arguing from data, with special attention to geospatial, textual, and network data. These methods will be taught primarily through scripting in the R programming language. While historical methods can be applied to many topics and time periods, they cannot be understood separate from how the discipline forms meaningful questions and interpretations, nor divorced from the particularities of the sources and histories of some specific topic. You will therefore work through a series of example problems using datasets from the history of the nineteenth-century United States, and you will apply these methods to a dataset in your own field of research. Additional emphasis will be placed on publishing your scholarship on the web. While this is not a course in web development, you will learn the basics of publishing documents on the web, including familiarity with command line programs, Git and GitHub, and packages such as RMarkdown for publishing data analysis. In other words, this class will teach you how to have something historically meaningful to say from data, and how to publish what you want to say on the web.

HIST 697 001 enrollment is controlled. Contact egibson5@gmu.edu to register.

Course Information from the University Catalog

Credits: 3

Introduces students how to create, computationally analyze, and publish historical data. Students explore theoretical and historical issues as well as learn programming skills. Notes: Students with limited computer competency should consult with department before enrolling. May not be repeated for credit.
Recommended Prerequisite: HIST 696 or permission of instructor.
Registration Restrictions:

Enrollment limited to students with a class of Advanced to Candidacy, Graduate, Junior Plus, Non-Degree or Senior Plus.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate, Non-Degree or Undergraduate level students.

Students in a Non-Degree Undergraduate degree may not enroll.

Schedule Type: Seminar
Grading:
This course is graded on the Graduate 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.