Doing History in Public

What is the place of digital historians in the larger field of digital humanities? Are digital historians simply public historians working in a new environment? Recently, digital humanists have struggled to find a definition of the field that is sufficiently broad to encompass the goals and methodologies of practitioners from a variety of fields including literary studies, geography, archeology, media studies, classics, and history. Given these disciplinary differences, practitioners approach data and digital tools with different kinds of inquiry questions. Digital historians can draw on the thirty year tradition of public history, which emphasizes collaboration and public engagement. At the same time, they have access to the work of cognitive scientists, who have developed an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the way that people learn history. In combination, these influences yield a version of digital work—“Doing history in public”—that places inquiry questions front and center. This talk will explore the implications of scientific work and the ways that it can clarify the place of digital history within the larger landscape of the digital humanities.