Digital History and the American Civil War

Edward Ayers and William Thomas, III, History

1997 TTI Fellow

Project website: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vshadow2/projects/projects.html

Students studying the history of the Civil War will get an opportunity to combine hands-on historical work with cutting-edge media development in this new class (HIST 403) taught by Ayers and Thomas. This project builds on their much acclaimed previous work "The Valley of the Shadow Project.” In this project each student will be responsible for crafting a web site dedicated to telling the story of a company of Civil War soldiers—about a hundered men. The students will gather and build collective biographies of these units as well as plot their movements across time and space using the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion and innovative mapping techniques developed by the Valley Project. Students involved in this project will not only learn the techniques of historiography, but also valuable skills in digital media creation and manipulation.