Archivist and Deep Fakes

A piece from Gizmodo, How Archivists Could Stop Deepfakes from Rewriting History, is something that should interest our students who are taking methods and will take digital history and archival practices.

History 417: Culture Wars: The Politics of Memory

Dr. Payne, History Department

Spring 2019

MWF 1:30 to 2:20

The culture wars are back (did they ever go away?)

Are we destroying history?

As a society, what do we decide to honor?  What do we decide to forget?  Who gets to decide? What is the difference between history and commemoration?

What does it mean to be American? 

Who Decides?

We’ll look at the issues that divide America along the lines of region, race, religion, gender, generations, and others.

We’ll place many of the current culture wars topics in historical context.  How did we react to black athletes protesting in the past?  Previous debates over immigration?

What happens when the nation’s demographics change?  Does technology bring us together or split us apart?

We’ll look at previous culture wars – prohibition, Scopes Monkey Trial – and some ongoing hot topics – immigration, urban/rural split, race relations. 

Oct 11 Meet and Greet

The history department is having a little get together for students on Oct 11 at 11:30 in P. 109.  Lots of pizza and cookies available!  Stop by.  You can meet the faculty.  Learn our plans and what classes we'll be offering.  Next semester we're offering two new classes, one on cyberwarfare and another on video gaming and history, plus the return of the class on the culture wars.  Learn about the history club and Phi Alpha Theta.  Make suggestions.  We're looking for ideas.

History Majors at the Bucknell Digital Scholarship Conference

Joe Aldridge and Isaac Ryss presenting at the Bucknell Digital Scholars Conference with Dennis Frank (pictured) and Phillip Payne.

The presentation, "We Built and App:  Exploring New Assignments in a History Class," was about the student, archivist, and faculty perspective in introducing a new assignment building an app to host our digital map of the St. Bonaventure Cemetery.  This is the sort of assignment that brought together the History Department, Friedsam Memorial Library, and the St. Bonaventure Android App Development club.

This being a digital scholarship conference, participants were active on Twitter so here are some Tweets about the presentation.

The conference had a lot of really cool examples of people working across disciplines and unites.  We came back with a lot of ideas for new, fun, assignments.