Exploring the History of Digital History: Setting an Agenda

Scientific Conference (2022, June 02)

See attached.

Introduction: Handbook of Digital Public History

in Noiret, Serge; Tebeau, Mark; Zaagsma, Gerben (Eds.) Handbook of Digital Public History (2022)

This handbook provides a systematic overview of the present state of international research in digital public history (DPH). Detailed individual studies by internationally renowned public historians ... [more ▼]

This handbook provides a systematic overview of the present state of international research in digital public history (DPH). Detailed individual studies by internationally renowned public historians, digital humanists and digital historians elucidate central issues in the field and present a critical account of the major public history accomplishments, research activities, practices with the public and of their digital context. The handbook applies an international and comparative public history approach, looks at its historical development, focuses on technical background and on the use of specific digital media, software’s and digital tools. It offers a bibliography adapted to each chapter. The Handbook analyses connections with local communities and different publics worldwide when engaging in digital activities with the past, and indicate directions for future research, practices and teaching activities. Its aim is to delimit the field as it is situated between digital humanities, digital history and public history. [less ▲]

The Digital Archive and the Politics of Digitisation

Scientific Conference (2022, March 10)

In this paper I will discuss key parameters of the politics of digitisation within a broader historical and global context with the aim to encourage further debate on its implications for historical ... [more ▼]

In this paper I will discuss key parameters of the politics of digitisation within a broader historical and global context with the aim to encourage further debate on its implications for historical research. In the first part, I will outline the global dimensions of the politics of digital cultural heritage with a particular focus on developments within and between Europe and Africa, framed within the broader context of the politics of heritage and its preservation and recent debates about ‘postcolonial digital humanities’. In the second part, I will discuss the history and current state of digitisation in Europe and Africa. Here I will partly draw upon the web archive of the IFLA/Unesco Directory of Digitised Library Collections (2002-2006) and recent global and European digitisation surveys. The paper will conclude by highlighting the paradoxical situation we currently face with regard to digitisation and the state of ‘memory’ in both the global North and South. [less ▲]

Keynote lecture: Exploring Jewish History in the Digital Age

Scientific Conference (2021, October 04)

This lecture will explore the intersection of Jewish Studies and Digital Humanities in general, and the myriad ways in which new technologies affect the field of Jewish History in particular. Importantly ... [more ▼]

This lecture will explore the intersection of Jewish Studies and Digital Humanities in general, and the myriad ways in which new technologies affect the field of Jewish History in particular. Importantly, the digital turn in Jewish Studies needs to be historicised; as is the case for the humanities in general, applications of computing in Jewish Studies go back at least 60 years. And as is true for the humanities in general, we should be careful to differentiate engagements with technology in the various (sub-)disciplines that Jewish Studies incorporates, while remaining attentive to common methodological and epistemological questions. In my lecture I will address these broader issues and ask what specific characteristics, if any, Jewish Studies scholars face, before delving into the specific challenges for Jewish historical research. I will then discuss how digital approaches have been, are, and could be harnassed to address these. As digitisation opens up new avenues for research, and can help overcome the classic problem of dispersal of sources, a crucial question to ask is what (Jewish) heritage is being digitised and which stories about the (Jewish) past can (and cannot) be told using them. What are the politics of digitisation in the context of Jewish history and how can we ensure that the offline Jewish historical record remains as relevant as its online counterpart in an age where more and more scholars move to using online resources? In short, how does the digital turn affect Jewish historical research and how can we bring about the full potential of the digital turn for research into Jewish history? [less ▲]

Review of Adam Crymble: Technology and the Historian. Transformations in the Digital Age

in H-Soz-Kult: Kommunikation und Fachinformation für die Geschichtswissenschaften (2021)

Digital Cultural Heritage and the Politics of Digitisation

Scientific Conference (2021, May 11)

This talk deals with a question that is becoming increasingly important for historians who work with digitised cultural heritage: what are the politics of digitisation and what are its implications for ... [more ▼]

This talk deals with a question that is becoming increasingly important for historians who work with digitised cultural heritage: what are the politics of digitisation and what are its implications for historical research? Is the often-lauded democratising potential of digitisation also offset by challenges, inherent in selection processes that might privilege the digitisation of heritage corresponding to existing national master narratives, the availability of funding and/or the priorities set by cultural policies and certain research agendas? How does transnational heritage fit into this picture when most digitisation projects are, in one way or another, nationally framed? What biases can digital archives introduce in our work and how does that differ from issues of bias and selection in the ‘paper’ archive? A key point to highlight is that professional historians can and should be more open to learn from the experience of digital archivists and librarians who are at the forefront of the digital turn in heritage wsk. the talk will conclude with a brief plea and suggestion for transparancy guidelines for digital resources. [less ▲]

Mapping wartime Jewish diaries and their postwar trajectories

Scientific Conference (2021, March 26)

If Auschwitz has become the key symbol of the Holocaust, then the fate of Anne Frank and her family has become symbolic of Jewish wartime experiences in Nazi-occupied Europe, and Anne’s diaries of Jewish ... [more ▼]

If Auschwitz has become the key symbol of the Holocaust, then the fate of Anne Frank and her family has become symbolic of Jewish wartime experiences in Nazi-occupied Europe, and Anne’s diaries of Jewish diary writing. As such they are constitutive of people’s ideas about the Holocaust and the Jewish experience during World War II. Indeed, the Anne Frank diaries are intrinsic to the development of postwar Holocaust memory. Yet we know that the case of Anne Frank was far from representative, and insofar as scholars strive to recover the full range of Jewish wartime experiences, as filtered through autobiographical texts, this situation is obviously problematic. In contrast to Anne Frank and her diary, the ‘context of textual production’ (Garbarini 2014) for any Jew writing in Eastern Europe, in the very centre of the killings, could not be more different. As a result diary writing here diferred starkly in terms of both content and intent. This is particularly true for Yiddish diaries, which reflect the experiences of the poorest Jews in Eastern Europe. This paper focuses on wartime Jewish diaries from Poland. It is based mostly upon the collection of diaries from the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, 75% of which are written in Polish and around 20% in Yiddish. Importantly, the collection’s inventory indicates both the locations were the writer is known to have been, as well as those locations which are mentioned in the diary, which of course do not necessarily overlap. As a result the collection’s metadata allow us to map several things: the spatio-linguistic distribution of wartime diaries and the areas covered by them; and the spread of news, as reflected by the locations covered by the diaries’ contents. Moreover, in addition to enabling the analysis of a wealth of contextual information, the inventory also lists known translation and/or publication data for each diary. As a result, we can get a glimpse in their postwar trajectories and analyse which diaries were published, where and at what time, and in which translations. This, in turn, can tell us much about the relation between translation and Holocaust memory since, as Naomi Seidman has argued (2006), “the canon of Holocaust literature should be read as the rewriting of this historical event for new audiences”. A final step would be to embed information from the diaries’ themselves, and the actual experiences that are conveyed, into the maps, thus creating a deep map which combines more factual information about the diaries with the subjective lived experiences contained within them. The project seeks to contribute to a more balanced understanding of wartime Jewish diaries and writing during WWII in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, though the prism of a specific collection. The broader aim of the paper is to provide an example of the type of new spatio-temporal insights that can be gleaned from collections’ metadata, in addition to ‘traditional’ textual content analysis. The project uses Nodegoat (nodegoat.net) as a way to manage, explore and visualise the data. [less ▲]

Digital history and the politics of digitization

Scientific Conference (2021, March 10)

This paper addresses the question of the politics of (cultural heritage) digitisation and its consequences for historical research. To put it simply, it discusses the question of why, where and how we can ... [more ▼]

This paper addresses the question of the politics of (cultural heritage) digitisation and its consequences for historical research. To put it simply, it discusses the question of why, where and how we can access what we can access. The online documentary record affects historical research and we need to understand how and in what ways our online evidentiary basis is constituted and might affect our research. [less ▲]

Round table: Jewish Studies in the Digital Age

Presentation (2021, January 14)

The international virtual conference “#DHJewish - Jewish Studies in the Digital Age” took place from 11 to 14 January 2021 and brought together more than sixty scholars and heritage practitioners to ... [more ▼]

The international virtual conference “#DHJewish - Jewish Studies in the Digital Age” took place from 11 to 14 January 2021 and brought together more than sixty scholars and heritage practitioners to discuss how the digital turn affects the field of Jewish Studies. The conference ended with a closing round table, which was introduced and moderated by Gerben Zaagsma, and featured Miriam Rürup, Sinai Rusinek, Daniel Stoekl Ben Ezra, Rachel Deblinger and Jeffrey Shandler. [less ▲]

The Helpers of Anne Frank - Recontextualising the Rescue of Dutch Jews

Scientific Conference (2020, November 24)

This paper sets out to recontextualise the memory of rescue as it pertains to Dutch Jewry during the Holocaust, by focusing on the helpers of Anne Frank and the other Jews in hiding in the Secret Annex ... [more ▼]

This paper sets out to recontextualise the memory of rescue as it pertains to Dutch Jewry during the Holocaust, by focusing on the helpers of Anne Frank and the other Jews in hiding in the Secret Annex. Much in the same way as perceptions of Jews in hiding have been decisively shaped by the story of Anne Frank, not only in the Dutch public imagination but arguably globally, so too the image of help, at least in the Western European and Anglosaxon world, has been considerably shaped by the story of two of the five helpers, Miep and Jan Gies, even if the support they provided to the onderduikers in the Secret Annex could ultimately not prevent discovery. The question of help, as well as the ultimate betrayal, of the onderduikers are linked to the broader question of the role of the Dutch population during the Holocaust. Within that context the Anne Frank story can and has indeed been used to provide both a stereotypical image of Gentile betrayal as well as an idealized and, arguably, romanticized image of Gentile help. In this paper I will trace the ways in which the image of help and rescue of Dutch Jews was shaped by the story of, especially, Miep Gies and analyse the ways in which her story resonated in the Netherlands as well as abroad. Important moments in this regard were the recognition of Miep Gies and the other helpers as Righteous Among the Nations in 1972, and the global publication of Miep Gies’ memoirs in 1987. I will frame this analysis within the broader historical context of 1) help provided to Jews in hiding in the Netherlands and the question of how representative the ‘helpers of Anne Frank’ were, and 2) the extent to which a focus on a few key individuals obscures the more complex reality of how rescue functioned in the first place. [less ▲]