Rights-Making and Rights-Taking: A Module on Stonewall and Intersectionality
Rights-Making and Rights-Taking: A Module on Stonewall and Intersectionality

In the end, I decided to frame rights in the context of "rights-making" and "rights-taking." By "rights-making," I asked the students to reflect on the fact that civil, human, constitutional, etc. rights are always made in a historical context. In practice, rights are never constant. They are negotiated, claimed, and fought for. By "rights-taking," I wanted them to think about how, in these historical contexts, rights are taken (i.e. claimed) by activists or taken away by those with power. Rather than working from a history-of or a taxonomical approach to rights, we would focus on rights as an assemblage of ideas, concepts, social relations, symbolic forms, claims, laws, practices, and materialities in motion.

Read More
TeachingJason Kellyteaching, teaching resources, intersectionality, LGBTQ+, oral history, historical memory, filmComment
Censorship (again), but with an Autocratic Twist
Censorship (again), but with an Autocratic Twist

It must be that time of year again. Politicians on the right are lining up to censor history— specifically, what texts can be used in the classroom. And, once again, they’re pulling out their copies of Howard Zinn, shaking them in the air, and decrying writers who challenge their triumphalist versions of U.S. history. This time it’s the president—a person who, I can say with relative confidence, has never read more than a few pull quotes from the book.

Read More
Teaching, Public Scholarship, EssayJason Kellyautocracy, facism, Howard Zinn, Zinn, censorship, history, methods, histmethodsComment
The "Lost Cause" and the "Antebellum Imagination "
The "Lost Cause" and the "Antebellum Imagination "

In this selection from a module which teaches them about the concept of the “Lost Cause,” I try to help students better understand the overt and subtle ways in which the myth of the “Lost Cause” is embedded in the contemporary cultural milieu. In this section, I have them focus on the “antebellum imagination”—a way of thinking that effaces the history of enslavement and violence and instead imagines a glorious period of great houses, refined manners, and fancy dress.

Read More
Jason Kelly
Understanding Information and Disinformation: An Open Access Module
Understanding Information and Disinformation: An Open Access Module

Central to any historical work is reading, interpreting, and analyzing texts (whether these texts are written, visual, audio, etc.). Because of this, historians have to read texts very closely, sifting for valuable information and clues.

This course module has been created to help students better understand the nature of disinformation, misinformation, and mal-information.

Read More
TeachingJason Kellyinformation, disinformation, lateral reading, newsComment
Open Access Oral History Training Module Now Available
Open Access Oral History Training Module Now Available

The COVID-19 Oral History Project has teamed up with the Journal of the Plague Year (JOTPY) project to make these oral histories about the experience of COVID-19 available to the public. Among the items created through this collaboration is our Oral History Training Module. The first version of this module is available in Canvas through Indiana University.

Read More
Research, TeachingJason Kellyoral history, online teaching, public historyComment
Open Access Article on the Covid-19 Oral History Project in the Oral History Review
Open Access Article on the Covid-19 Oral History Project in the Oral History Review

This essay, “The COVID-19 Oral History Project: Some Preliminary Notes from the Field” reflects on C19OH as a rapid response oral history project – how the research team conceived and implemented it, both in the field and in the classroom, and how they continue to transform it in response to practical concerns and ethical frameworks.

Read More
ResearchJason Kellyoral history, COVID-19, article, history, pandemicComment
Press Coverage of The COVID-19 Oral History Project in the New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, etc.
Press Coverage of The COVID-19 Oral History Project in the New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, etc.

The COVID-19 Oral History Project is one of several research projects in which historians and museum curators are collecting stories about the lived experience of COVID-19. This important work is being contextualized by journalists, who see the importance of this archiving work for future generations.

Read More
Announcements, ResearchJason Kellyoral history, public humanities, public history, digital humanities, digital public historyComment
Introduction to Leaflet.js
Introduction to Leaflet.js

This tutorial builds upon our teaching modules that explored Google My Maps and Google Earth. In it, I will introduce Leaflet.js—a javascript-based program for hosting maps on your website.

Leaflet.js is open source and provides quite a bit of functionality that goes beyond the basic features of Google Maps. And, for those who wish to host maps on their own websites, it’s a relatively simple and low-cost option.

In this tutorial, we walk through a series of steps to understand the basics of Leaflet.js. The tutorial provides an example of how to create a basic map using a georectified historical map from MapWarper and a kml layer that we create in Google My Maps.

Read More
Digital Humanities, TeachingJason Kellymapping, gis, hgis, historical gis, public history, digital public history, digital humanities, leaflet.js, geojsonComment
Preparing a Historical Map for GIS Systems
Preparing a Historical Map for GIS Systems

This post introduces teachers and students to the process of georectifying maps so that historical maps can be used in programs such a Google Earth, QGIS, and ArcGIS. It provides a step-by-step tutorial on how to find historical maps, georectify them, and output them for use in research and in the classroom.

Read More
Blog Posts, TeachingJason Kellygis, hgis, historical methods, historical gis, digital humanities, mapping, digital public historyComment
Digital Humanities in Promotion and Tenure
Digital Humanities in Promotion and Tenure

As more scholars have engaged in the digital humanities—and as this scholarship has become an increasingly prominent part of promotion and tenure cases—it has become incumbent upon professional organizations and university departments to educate faculty on 1) what we mean by digital humanities and 2) how to evaluate faculty research in the digital humanities.

This post is a brief introduction to the digital humanities (a.k.a. DH) for university faculty whose responsibilities include reviewing promotion and tenure cases.

Read More
Blog Posts, Digital HumanitiesJason Kellypromotion, tenure, DH, digital humanities, digital history, digital scholarshipComment
Digital Audio for Public Historians (4): Editing Your Audio
Digital Audio for Public Historians (4): Editing Your Audio

Today, I am going to work with you on some basic audio editing techniques. As you will remember from class, we could use any number of programs to edit, such as GarageBand or Audacity. Since we all have a free subscription to Adobe Audition, I am going to demonstrate with it.

While the techniques that I am showing you today look different in different programs, all audio editing programs have the functionality that I am demonstrating.

Read More
Digital Humanities, Teaching, Public ScholarshipJason Kellydigital public history, public history, podcasting, digital humanities, teachingComment
Digital Audio for Public Historians (3): Microphone Types
Digital Audio for Public Historians (3): Microphone Types

We’ve finally gotten to microphones. A quality microphone might be the most important factor in creating a good recording rather than a bad recording. 

I have already talked about onboard microphones a bit in the first entry in this series on recording devices. That’s pretty much all I have to say about built-in mics. They’re fine for getting the job done—if content is more important than quality. 

For many public history applications, we would much prefer to have great content and a quality recording. To do this, we need good microphones that are set up so that they record what we want them to record and ignore what we want them to ignore. 

Read More
Digital Humanities, Public Scholarship, TeachingJason Kellypublic history, digital public history, podcasting, podcast, teaching resourcesComment
Digital Audio for Public Historians (2): Mono and Stereo
Digital Audio for Public Historians (2): Mono and Stereo

In this second installment for “Digital Audio for Public Historians,” I want to have a look at one of the basic recording options available on mid-range recorders: the option to have a mono or stereo recording. We will use sample recordings from the 1960s to illustrate a few key principals, including recordings of James Baldwin, The Beach Boys, and The Beatles.

Read More
Teaching, Digital Humanities, Public ScholarshipJason Kellymultimedia, multimodal, podcasting, podcast, public humanities, public history, digital public historyComment