A few days ago a commenter on my blog asked how he could learn to develop rich historical web sites “that would allow me to bring primary sources/scholarship from centuries ago to a wider audience.” I had a hard time thinking of digital humanities programs that provide training in authoring digital media (George Mason? Georgia Tech?). But then I heard about the new Masters concentration in History and Media at the University at Albany, which promises to prepare students to develop historical web sites, documentary films, oral histories, and other forms of media. Albany seems to be well-positioned to offer such a program; for instance, it published the late lamented Journal for Multimedia History, a groundbreaking journal focused multimedia explorations of historical topics. In a recent discussion about “The Promise of Digital History” published in the Journal of American History, Amy Murrell Taylor, one of the professors developing Albany’s program, makes a persuasive case for thinking about digital history as a medium, “as the production of something that can stand alongside a book, something that takes a different form but nonetheless raises questions, offers analysis, and advances our historiographical knowledge about a given subject.”
Here’s the announcement, taken from H-Net:
The University at Albany’s Department of History has introduced a new 36-credit History and Media concentration to its Masters program, allowing students to learn and apply specialized media skills — digital history and hypermedia authoring, photography and photoanalysis, documentary filmmaking, oral/video history, and aural history and audio documentary production — to the study of the past. The History and Media concentration builds on the Department’s strengths in academic and public history and its reputation as an innovator in the realm of digital and multimedia history.
Among the History and Media courses to be offered beginning in the fall of 2009 are: Introduction to Historical Documentary Media; Narrative in Historical Media; Readings and Practicum in Aural History and Audio Documentary Production; Readings and Practicum in Digital History and Hypermedia; Readings in the History and Theory of Documentary Filmmaking; Readings in Visual Media and Culture; Introduction to Oral and Video History; Research Seminar and Practicum in History and Media.
Instructors in the History and Media concentration will vary but will include a core faculty including:
Gerald Zahavi, Professor; Amy Murrell Taylor, Associate Professor; Ray Sapirstein, Assistant Professor; Sheila Curran Bernard, Assistant Professor.
For more information, contact Gerald Zahavi, zahavi@albany.edu; 518-442-5427.
| Prof. Gerald Zahavi Department of History University at Albany 1400 Washington Avenue Albany, NY 12222 518-442-5427 Email: zahavi@albany.edu Visit the website at http://www.albany.edu/history/histmedia/historymedia.pdf |
Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 