Digital Black Wilmington will combine a traditional upper-level history seminar experience with a cutting-edge digital humanities course to explore the field of black digital studies while also preserving and promoting the history of Black Wilmington. The classroom experience will combine seminar-style discussion with hands-on practice as students are introduced to new digital tools and techniques, as well as core ideas underpinning the field of black digital humanities/studies. This course will engage students in both the theoretical underpinnings and ethical concerns of black digital humanities, but also in the critical praxis which holds potential for “social justice, accessibility, and inclusion,” as the #transformDH collective has argued. Through engagement in these new ideas and techniques, students will work collaboratively to develop a multimodal digital project on the history of black Wilmington through the prism of the Wilmington Ten.

No previous experience with html, css, any other kind of coding is required for this course. What is required is a curiosity and willingness to engage with new technologies and new ideas.

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

• conceptualize and debate the pedagogical, ethical, and practical problems found in both digital public history and the black digital humanities;
• demonstrate a familiarity with many of the digital technologies used by public historians, museums, and heritage sites, as well as the ability to deploy these skills in a collaborative digital project on the history of black Wilmington
• present historical arguments in a variety of digital formats, including (but not limited to) data visualizations, oral histories, digital exhibitions, and podcasts.

Assignments

Digital Archive Review

Discussion Board Posts

Project Proposal

Final Project