This past summer in Digital History class, students had to map out a historical topic as it appears online. In the process of analyzing scholarly, amateur, and commercial Web sites, they created a hyperlinked presentation that introduced the audience to primary source repositories, public scholarship, and documentaries. Topics ranged from Robert Kennedy’s assassination to the history of American immigration law.
History major Bedell Terry did his summer project about the Chinese Exclusion Act, a federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur in 1882, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers. Rather than create just one map, Bedell created several maps hyperlinked to documents, to take viewers through the story of Chinese immigration in modern America. In the first slide, viewers are linked to nineteenth-century laws and attitudes toward the Chinese:
[Click here for Slide with Hyperlinks]
He then traveled with workers to the port of entry for Chinese immigrants, Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay:
[Click for Slide with Hyperlinks]
Next, he found letters, news, and other stories from immigrants’ lives in California:
He included links to the original Act and its Repeal in 1943, and information on other Chinese-American communities:
Dr. Hudgins was somewhat surprised to hear from Bedell that he learned more about the topic by researching its digital life than he would have from a traditional textbook. “I had to go looking for the information,” he said, “which was a lot more active than glancing at a paragraph provided in a book.” Students learned in the class that, for topics traditionally neglected in large studies, digital sources have been filling a gap for the beginner. We also observed the passion with which devoted amateurs, descendants, and even collectors have given their knowledge freely to the world. Digital History will become HIST 250 permanently beginning in fall 2019, fulfilling general education and graduation requirements for undergraduates at UB.