Descriptions Archive

HIST 4100A
Living, loving, and dying in Europe 1500-1800

Fall 2026/Winter 2027
Instructor: Professor Rod Phillips

What is this course about?
In this full-year seminar we try to capture the texture of the everyday lives of Europeans in the Early Modern period, roughly 1500-1800. It’s an exciting and challenging task because everyday lives are difficult to generalize about and the evidence of them is often elusive and apparently contradictory. That shouldn’t be surprising, as we look at the diversity of everyday lives around us. At the same time, it’s possible to define patterns and regularities, and that will be our achievement by the end of the course, even while we appreciate deviations from what appear to be the dominant patterns.  
We’ll focus on a number of themes that lead us down a number of trails. Supposing we start with birth, which marks the beginning of ‘living’. We might ask: What were birth rates in Early Modern Europe? How many children did women have on average? Were there variations by region, by class, by religion, and between town and country?  How did birth rates change over time, and why? What percentage of children were born to married or cohabiting couples, what percentage to single women?
 
                                               
 
Having established the big picture, we’ll try to understand these birth rates. Why did people have children anyway – to provide workers, to ensure there were heirs for land and titles, to comply with religious teachings, or unintentionally? Did religious and secular authorities encourage people to have children? If women or couples didn’t want to have children, what kinds of family limitation were available – abortion, contraception, sexual abstinence, non-procreative sexual behaviour, infanticide?  Were they permitted, and how widely were they used?
How old were women when they started and ceased having children?  How were births spaced, and why? Did many women die in childbirth, and what became of their children? Why did women have children outside marriage? Were these births simply unintended or were women persuaded to risk pregnancy by promises of marriage? Were women coerced to have sex or raped?
 
                             
 
Where and in what context did births take place? How often were midwives involved? How were newborns cared for? Were they breast-fed by their mothers or by wet-nurses? Why did so many children – often a fifth or a quarter – die in the first year of life? How common were infanticide and child-abandonment? What was the state of medical knowledge with regard to infants? How were children named and how many were baptized?
What seems a reasonably straightforward event – birth – leads us into many areas of economic, religious, social, cultural, and even political life. At every point, women and men made decisions that can reveal their attitudes towards one another and the world around them. Their decisions give us insights into their modes of thought, experiences, and behaviour.
 
                                               
 
We’ll track a number of life events/issues in this way, including childhood, relationships, marriage, family and household relationships, diet, clothing, animals, work, leisure, illness, old age, and death. As we do, we’ll study the way historians employ theoretical perspectives and methodologies as they write their histories. We’ll read secondary works (mainly articles), watch videos, analyse primary printed sources, interpret statistics, and evaluate contemporary images. In short, we’ll deploy a wide range of resources and perspectives to understand the complexities of living, loving, and dying in Early Modern Europe.
Course format
This is a seminar that will meet in person once a week throughout the academic year (September 2026 to April 2027).
Coursework
Seminars are discussions, and students are expected to read specified readings in advance of each meeting so as to be prepared to participate in discussions. The course outline will list the topics of the weekly seminars and the readings to be done in advance. All the readings (almost all are articles) are available on-line. Each student will briefly introduce one article each term.
The major piece of coursework is an essay that’s due by the end of the Winter term. In the last few weeks of that term, each student will present their essay to the seminar. Just as “living, loving, and dying” includes a massive range of subjects, so there’s great flexibility in your choice of essay topic. Past essays have included domestic architecture, evidence of contraception, violence, attitudes toward death, wolves, child-rearing, responses to disease, and tea-drinking practices. You’ll decide on your topic in consultation with me.
Your final grade will be based on (1) your participation in discussions, (2) your introduction of two articles, and (3) the presentation of your essay and the essay itself. (There is no final examination.)
Textbook
There’s no textbook for this seminar, but students not familiar with Early Modern Europe are advised to read a general survey so as to have a sense of the place and the period. Good surveys are: Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Early Modern Europe, 1450-1789 (3^rd edition); Henry Kamen, Early Modern European Society; and Beat Kümin (ed.), The European World, 1500-1800 (available on-line).
Questions?
For more information, please contact me: roderick.phillips@carleton.ca

HIST 4303

Society and Culture in Canada [Pacific Canada] 

Winter 2027

Instructor: Professor Laura Madokoro

Introduction: What is the Pacific? A region? An ocean? There are many ways of thinking about the Pacific and, relatedly, the Pacific World. Inspired by the idea of Canada as a Pacific Nation, this course explores how the history of Canada has been shaped by its Pacific connections and, in turn, how Canada has shaped and influenced the Pacific World. To this end, this course traces the history of Canada and the Pacific World from the late 18th century to the present and covers subjects such as identity, migration, cultural and political change. As the course takes a transnational approach, we will be studying aspects of the history of China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam in addition to our focus on Canada.

Class Format: This seminar meets once a week over a three-hour block and combines lectures and discussion based on course materials including novels, academic articles, films, and. Where possible, we will take field trips across the National Capital Region to further our understanding of Canada’s relationship to the Pacific World. 

Assessment: As this seminar is based on engaged participation, there is a self-assessment grade for participation, as well as an assessment of weekly reading reflections, a class presentation, and a final research project. 

Course Materials: Readings for the course consist of a variety of essays and academic articles as well as a range of textual, audio, and visual primary sources. 

Questions? Please e-mail laura.madokoro@carleton.ca

HIST 4806:

Playing History: Sport, Culture, and Power from Antiquity to the Present

Fall 2026

Instructor: Matthew J. Bellamy

Introduction: Why study sports history?

Sport is far more than entertainment or recreation. It shapes identities, generates immense wealth, inspires political movements, and helps nations imagine themselves. Athletes become symbols of masculinity, race, nationalism, celebrity, and resistance. To study sports history, therefore, is not simply to study games or athletes; it is to examine the evolution of modern society itself.

This seminar explores the history of sport from antiquity to the present through major themes such as empire, nationalism, race, gender, capitalism, media, and celebrity culture. We will examine topics including Indigenous games and colonization, muscular Christianity, the rise of professional sport, race and class in boxing and baseball, hockey and gender identity, sports entrepreneurship, doping scandals, and the making of global athletic icons. Along the way, we will consider how sport both reflects and shapes broader social and cultural transformations.

Class Format

This course is organized as a fourth-year seminar and meets once per week in a three-hour block. Our classes will be discussion-based and designed to encourage thoughtful, relaxed conversation about the history of sport. Together we will explore historical scholarship, documentaries, podcasts, autobiographies, and other sources in order to better understand how sport has evolved across time and place.

From time to time, students will help introduce the week’s readings and discussion themes. These introductions are intended to be informal and conversational rather than formal presentations, and are designed to help foster collaborative discussion and shared exploration of ideas.

Aims and Goals

By the end of the course, students will have developed a deeper understanding of the history of sport and its relationship to culture, politics, identity, and social change. Topics explored throughout the course include:

• Indigenous games and colonization
• Sport, empire, and masculinity
• Boxing, race, and political activism
• Hockey, gender, and nationalism
• Sports entrepreneurship and commercialization
• Doping scandals and performance enhancement
• Celebrity athletes and media culture

The course also emphasizes the development of skills in historical analysis, discussion, research, and academic writing.

Assessment

Your mark in the course will be based on seminar participation, seminar leadership, an essay proposal, and a final research paper. The research essay will give students the opportunity to explore a topic of personal interest related to the history of sport, culture, politics, media, business, or identity.

Questions?

I very much look forward to exploring this subject with you over the term. If you have any questions about the course, readings, assignments, or the study of sports history more generally, please do not hesitate to contact me at Matthew_Bellamy@Carleton.ca. I am always happy to meet with students and discuss ideas or course material.

History 2809B

The Historian’s Craft

Winter 2027

Instructor: Professor Michel Hogue

Description: If, as some suggest, the past is a foreign country, then how do historians find their way around? What tools or methods do they use to navigate this historical terrain? This course offers a hands-on introduction to the ways that historians investigate, assess, and represent the past. 

Your work this term will focus on an applied research project that will have you investigate and explain aspects of student life on Carleton’s campus. You will be asked to do the work of an historian: you will locate and examine a wide array of primary and secondary sources and apply some of the varied methods of analysis that historians use to make sense of the past. You will also assess some of the different ways that historians craft their studies and present their findings. These are the methods and skills that you will need to thrive in your other history courses. At the same time, this course is meant to have you develop and reflect on the ways that your work in the classroom might be applied outside of it. To that end, we will keep our eye on the practical applications of the research, writing, and analytical skills that are at the core of your university course work.   

Format: This course will be delivered in a blended format. The three course hours per week will include an asynchronous, online course module (1 hour/week) and in-person discussions and hands-on activities (2 hours/week).   

Evaluation: In the past, students in this course completed an applied research project that asked them to undertake original research and rigorous analysis of historical primary sources. Other activities will include:

• Weekly quizzes based on the lectures and required readings
• Regular reflections on a subject or theme covered in class
• Regular short lab assignments

Readings: The readings for the course will be made available online.

If you have any questions, please contact me at michel.hogue@carleton.ca

HISTORY 3113
Society and Revolution in France, 1789-1799         
Professor Rod Phillips
Fall 2026
Scope of the course
The French Revolution was not only central to the history of France and Europe, but it had impacts on the wider world. Its legacy includes images such as the guillotine, institutions such as the metric system and military conscription, terms such as ‘Terror’, and the notions of ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ on the political spectrum. Some of the individuals associated with the Revolution, such as Marie Antoinette and Napoleon, are household names. In France today, the Revolution is ever-present in the form of the national flag, the national day (Bastille Day, 14 July), the phrase ‘Liberté Egalité Fraternité’ (‘Liberty Equality Fraternity’) on all public buildings, and the national anthem, La Marseillaise.
 
                                               
                                               
The dominant image of the French Revolution in the popular imagination is violence – think of the guillotine, the Terror, the European wars, the executions of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities. But that is only one of its dimensions. It was also a period when institutions of all kinds – political, legal, social, cultural, religious, and military – were fundamentally and peacefully reformed. 
Some reforms are well known, such as the abolition of the monarchy, but other achievements of the French Revolution are not. It abolished slavery in France’s colonies. It gave civil rights to Jews and Muslims. It separated Church and State for the first time in Europe. It reformed family law, giving women and men equality in inheritance, secularizing marriage, and permitting divorce for the first time in France. It aimed to provide citizens with food security. It criminalized violence against women. It decriminalized homosexuality. It created the first mass citizen-army. It began social welfare and pension schemes. It began to make education available to all. Reforms such as these affected all aspects of society, culture, and the economy in France and in many other parts of Europe.
 

The French Revolution is the most-studied decade in world history and there is a wealth of information in many languages on almost every aspect of it. We can’t possibly cover everything in this course, and instead we will focus on a number of topics that include building a nation, women’s rights, religions, the family, education, food security, and poverty.
In each case we will ask four questions: what was its status before the Revolution? How did the Revolutionaries view it? What did they do about it?  What were the results?  When we look at women’s rights, for example, we will examine the status of women in France before the Revolution, the debates on and by women from 1789, the emergence of a women’s rights movement, laws and policies affecting women, and the overall impact of the Revolution on women.
                                   
The aim of the course is to give us a sense of how comprehensive and radical the Revolution attempted to be. It was not simply a matter of replacing one political system with another, but of transforming social relationships – what the Revolutionaries called ‘regeneration’. A regenerated France would be a nation of free citizens (Liberty) who enjoyed equal rights (Equality) and worked together to create a new society (Fraternity).  As we will see, many of these aspirations failed – sometimes because they were unrealistically ambitious, sometimes because they were thwarted or annulled by the regimes of Napoleon and the restored monarchy that followed the Revolution. But they were intrinsic to the exciting revolutionary project that began in 1789.
Course format
This is a lecture course that meets in person once a week for three hours. There will be ample opportunity for discussions.
Aims of the course
While examining the course of the French Revolution, we will consider some of the questions historians and citizens confront today. How should we assess historical figures – in terms of their context or in terms of more recent values? Debates about removing statues and renaming places and institutions took place during the Revolution, when there was an attempt to remove all references to kings, nobles, saints, and other undesirables. Statues were torn down, and towns and streets were renamed. But then the Revolution experienced the same process, and we look at how it has been remembered, celebrated, and condemned. As we confront these questions we will engage with various media: printed texts, paintings, drawings, and sculptures.
Assessment
There will be one reading response, one essay, and a final (take-home) exam.  All the readings for these assignments will be available on-line.
Textbook
Peter McPhee, Liberty or Death: The French Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017). I haven’t ordered copies for the University Bookstore, but they are available ($26-28)  from online and other retailers.
Questions
For more information, please contact me: roderick.phillips@carleton.ca

HIST 3206A:

Place, Politics, and the Resettling of the Prairie West

Fall 2026

Instructor: Professor Michel Hogue

Description:  This course the investigates the political, economic and social changes that occurred across the Prairie West in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It seeks to put a human face to the broad structural transformations of the era, from the demise of the mercantile capitalism of the fur trade to the advance of the agrarian capitalism that made the modern Prairies.  In the process, it exposes the close entanglements that bound Indigenous peoples and their would-be colonizers. 

Format: This course will be offered live and in-person. Our investigations over the course of the semester will be organized around the weekly readings. Our time in class will be divided between lectures and discussions that will help to contextualize those readings, as well as various applied activities that will give you the opportunity to develop vital research and writing skills.

Evaluation: The course activities will include:

• Weekly quizzes and in-class writing assignments based on the assigned readings

Questions? Please contact me at michel.hogue@carleton.ca

History 3511A –

Themes in Indigenous History –The Red Atlantic: Trans-Atlantic Journeys by Indigenous Peoples

Winter 2027

Michel Hogue

Course Description:

Stories of early encounters between Indigenous peoples and Europeans often tend to focus on the trans-Atlantic journeys undertaken by Europeans. But what about the journeys made in the opposite direction by Indigenous peoples who travelled from North America to Europe?

The history of journeys by Indigenous peoples to Europe began in the sixteenth century with the traffic in slaves and captives back to Europe, but grew to include trans-Atlantic voyages by sailors, labourers, travellers, performers, and diplomats who incorporated these journeys as part of their political strategies. This course seeks to recreate some of the journeys undertaken by diverse Indigenous peoples from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. It situates their journeys in their cultural, political, and social contexts, both in North America and Europe and to understand the local and global significance of their actions. In the process, it seeks to return a measure of agency and complexity to the personal stories of those who embarked on such voyages.

In so doing, the class takes its cues from sociologist Paul Gilroy’s notion of the Black Atlantic, which put Africans at the center of Atlantic world history. While the numbers of Indigenous peoples who crossed the Atlantic represents a small fraction of the number of Africans who made similar journeys, Cherokee scholar Jace Weaver argues that Indigenous peoples, resources, and ideas traveled the Atlantic with regularity. Building on this insight, we will examine how Indigenous peoples were key players in this Atlantic World.

Course Format:

The class will combine formal lectures with in-class discussions and workshop activities based on the assigned readings or other supplementary materials.  The class will be organized around a series of case studies that will ask you to engage with primary source materials written by and about these travelers.

Assignments:

The grades for this course will be (tentatively) assessed as follows:

Participation                                                30%

Written assignments                                  70%

Questions? Please contact me at michel.hogue@carleton.ca

Summer 2026 (May-June)

HIST 5906S:  The Afterlives of Oral History

Course Description:

The Afterlives of Oral History is focussed on what happens once an oral history interview is completed.  We shall explore some of the ethical, methodological, and theoretical challenges and opportunities that present themselves for researchers either from the moment they turn their own recorders off or when they encounter interviews in an archive.  What can be done?  What ought to be done?  These two simple questions will guide us through our bi-weekly meetings, as we combine traditional seminar meetings (based on assigned readings, listenings, and viewings) with more workshop-like meetings across the six weeks of the course.  This is not a course in how-to-do an oral history interview.  Rather, this is a course about how to work ethically, critically, and creatively with oral history interviews. It is intended to offer both inspiration and guidance for students considering oral history practices in their own academic and / or professional work, but it will appeal to any history or public history student interested in exploring and contemplating the co-production of historical knowledge, storytelling, and reflexive, ethical scholarly praxis.

As a capstone experience, students in this course are invited to join the members and supporters of the feminist oral history group, The Kitchen Table Collective (https://www.kitchentablecollective.ca/), in Montreal on the evening of Thursday, June 11 (at the Centre des mémoires montréalaises) and most of Friday, June 12 (at Concordia University) for a series of workshops and presentations.  There are funds available to cover transportation costs and a small per diem for Friday. Depending on numbers, there may also be funds available to assist with accommodation. It is not a course requirement.  However, our class has been provided with special, invited access to the event, and it is a special opportunity to learn with some of the best feminist oral historians from all over the academic world. More details to come.

Assessment

As this is a condensed course (meeting twice weekly, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 6-9 pm,  from May 7 to June 16), assessment will be weighted differently than a traditional twelve-week course.

Attendance and Participation (weekly):  40%

Course Diary (weekly):  35%

Project Proposal (due at end of course):  25%

Details on all of this will be made available on the course website on Brightspace.

Summer 2026

History of the United States to 1865 Online

In this half-credit course we will study the history of the United States from colonial settlement up through the Civil War. During this period many people came to America because they sought greater economic opportunity for themselves and their children. Others were inspired to make the move because of a belief in radical political and religious ideas. Some were dragged to America in chains. Native peoples were already present when the first Europeans arrived. We will seek to understand American history and the American experience from the point of view of all of these people as they tried to make sense of the world around them while dealing with the myriad of conflicts, challenges, and opportunities life in America presented.

This asynchronous on-line course will consist of weekly lectures, reading assignments in a textbook, and additional outside texts including primary sources.  Lectures and assignments will be posted on Monday and Thursday morning each week with students free to view lectures and submit assigned work anytime up to the deadline on the following Sunday evening.  In addition, students will write one short essay on a designated text, have a take-home assignment which measures the quality of their study and reading of the material in this course, and a short assignment which requires them to carefully read and interpret a primary source of the instructor’s choosing.  There is no exam.

Please note that we are rarely able to offer institutional funding to International applicants at the MA level. If there is the possibility of obtaining financial support from a funding agency in your home country, or you have access to other sources of funding, please contact the Graduate Supervisor to discuss your application. We are sometimes able to offer funding to International applicants to the PhD program – again, please contact the Graduate Supervisor.

A Q&A with Ona Bantjes-Rafols, History MA student

Though she spent the first year of her MA degree meeting with professors and peers online during the COVID-19 pandemic, Ona Bantjes-Rafols has made the most of those connections. Now entering her second year, Ona has developed the same diverse skills she would have in the classroom, plus added abilities to adapt her methods to suit our changing world.

We caught up with Ona on her second (ever) visit to Carleton University’s campus to discuss her work, her specialization in Digital Humanities, and the many bonds she’s forged through Carleton’s History community.

• Could you tell me a bit about your path to your MA, and why you chose Carleton?

I did my Honours BA in History at Concordia University, where I was lucky enough to take a lot of fantastic seminars, do in-depth research, and present at student conferences, which were helpful experiences in deciding I wanted to do an MA. When I went to my professors for advice on where to go, I was told that if I was looking for a similar environment to the History department at Concordia, I should go to Carleton, where I would find lots of support and that new approaches to doing history were encouraged.

The Digital Humanities specialization was a big draw for me, as I was really interested in learning new ways to make my research accessible to broader publics. When I met my supervisor-to-be Dr. Jennifer Evans, she had so much enthusiasm and so many suggestions for my research that I decided Carleton was the place for me.

• Does your thesis have a cu_people_job_title? And how would you begin to describe what you’re aiming to achieve?

It has a tentative cu_people_job_title that will almost definitely change, as cu_people_job_titles have never been my forte. In “Queering Space: Memories and Maps of Queer 1970s Barcelona” I am taking a new approach to the history of queer life activism in 1970s Barcelona, analyzing this history through a spatial lens and focusing on the personal. As part of my thesis I created a digital map of memories, I am developing a walking tour currently, and I will be conducting oral history interviews this fall.

I’ll be using these different approaches to explore the interconnections of space and memory in relation to the history of queer life during Spain’s complicated political transition.

• Why Barcelona, and what’s significant about the 1970s time period?

I am part Catalan, and spent a lot of time in Barcelona growing up. I was always fascinated by my aunts’ and uncles’ stories about growing up during the dictatorship, and in particular the complicated and contested transition to democracy in the 1970s. I found out about the gay rights movements that emerged in the 1970s for an undergraduate research paper, and became really interested in the relationship between queer activism and the political transition in the Spanish State at that time, and all the disagreements that emerged between activists over how best to change their world.

Often, even outside the United States, when people think of queer history, they only think of New York, and Stonewall, but of course there were many movements that emerged in very different political situations and with their own cultural and linguistic complexities that deserve their own spotlight as well. The English-language scholarship on Barcelona’s queer history is quite scarce, so I am excited to introduce more people to these histories.

• How are you incorporating digital humanities and mapping into your project, and what value does it bring?

I am really passionate about digital humanities as a tool for bringing research projects to a much wider audience – although I do actually enjoy academic articles, I know not everyone has the time, or most importantly, the access to read them. The digital sphere also opens up possibilities for communicating research in different ways, visually or orally for example.

I created a digital interactive map based on published interviews with people who involved with the gay rights movement in the 1970s in Barcelona, which was very helpful for me in my research to get a sense of where these moments were happening, what sites were important and for what reasons. It also connected me to people with similar interests which has been wonderful – it can be hard to make connections when you only work from home! I am currently working on the Catalan translation in order to share it with more people in Barcelona and have it serve as a resource for educators and others.

• I’m curious about your use of oral history. Could you walk us through what you’ve learned about the method in your time at Carleton, and how you’ve approached the process with respect to your thesis project?

My interest in oral history began during my time at Concordia University, and was central to my MA thesis idea from the start. My initial plan, pre-COVID, involved interviewing techniques like “memory mapping”, where I would ask participants to draw the spaces of Barcelona that were important to them during our interview. I tried to think about how I could adapt that style of interviewing to a remote interview, but eventually decided that I preferred to leave that for another time, and instead focus on asking questions that could bring out their own spatial understandings of their history.

I conducted oral history interviews over Zoom this spring for a side research project on Spanish immigration to Canada, and found that doing interviews through video conferencing is much more difficult than in person – it’s much harder to build trust, and to ease into questions. However, it became very unclear whether I would be able to go to Barcelona for field work, and so I shifted my focus a bit so that I was not relying on solely using interviews with the memory mapping technique. I still hope to explore that style of interviewing someday, but I’ve decided not to make it the main focus, because it is always a possibility that interviews have to switch to the online setting.

• What’s one thing about your MA research that has surprised you, opened your eyes, or taken your academic journey in an unexpected direction?

I began developing a walking tour with a collaborator in Barcelona based on the digital map I created, as another way to make the research more accessible to people in Barcelona. After talking about it with Prof. Evans, we realized I could include that experience in my thesis as a way to explore another aspect of doing spatial history – what changes when you’re walking through this city’s history, rather than moving through a map of it? How do we create a walking tour that is socially conscious, and not geared for tourism? These are some of the questions that I am finding really exciting, and which are bringing me in directions I was not expecting at all!

• What have you learned from your supervisor, Professor Jennifer Evans, and from other professors, and your peers?

Learning to adapt and let go of old expectations has been really necessary as a graduate student during COVID-19, and Prof. Evans has been very helpful in pushing me to consider new angles or different opportunities within what was possible for me research-wise. She also pushed me to draw from disciplinary streams that I would not have necessarily considered, and to read theorists that seemed daunting but that had a lot of rich and helpful ideas once I dug in.

I was also lucky to have the help of Professor Shawn Graham with the digital humanities aspect, he gave me tutorials on coding and put me in touch with the wonderful GIS librarians at Carleton, in particular Rebecca Bartlett who has taught me a lot about preparing data for mapping.

I have also received a lot of very helpful feedback from my peers through a club that myself and fellow MA students Danielle Carron and Sammy Holmes created together called the History Grad Research Club, where we present our research to each other and through that experience find new ideas to explore and important connections between our work. We are continuing that this year, and hopefully others will take it up once we graduate!

• Where do you hope your degree takes you?

I am passionate about making historical research accessible, and love researching in general, so I am looking to careers that can include those aspects. My experiences creating digital exhibits, working as a teaching assistant, and as a research assistant to the Gendered Design in STEAM project at Carleton are all providing me with valuable new skills and have opened my eyes to other career possibilities that I had not considered before, which I think is an important part of an MA degree.

• What would you say to a prospective student thinking about pursuing a history degree at Carleton?

I would definitely recommend the History department at Carleton – I have had a really good experience, even though I have not yet stepped inside the physical department since starting, due to COVID-19 restrictions! There was a lot of effort on the part of the students to foster community despite the situation, and I had great professors who were very accommodating and quick to adapt. I also recommend the Digital Humanities specialization to anyone with interest in exploring what digital tools can do and how best to use them, I had very few digital skills when I began and am leaving having learned a lot.

The Digital Humanities is a broad term for exploring how we understand amongst other things art, film, music, literature, popular culture, collective memory, history, and material culture through the lens of digital technologies. It is also about exploring how the use of such technologies changes the kinds of questions we can ask, as well as the way such technologies change us as scholars. It is a reflexive approach to using and thinking about the impacts of digital technologies as we pursue our research.

Students in DH tackle research questions such as: How are digital publishing, social media, and surveillance altering personal and communal identities? Can 3D modelling produce new understandings of material culture? How do we write good history through immersive media like video games?

History students pursuing the collaborative MA in DH have explored the ways industrial sounds can be used to trigger memory for oral history, the use of ‘projection mapping’ to re-insert contentious histories into public spaces, and recreating historical social networks from archives.

For a crowdsourced perspective on the many facets of the Digital Humanities, visit Jason Heppler’s ‘What is Digital Humanities‘ website. Hit ‘reload’ to load up a new definition.