Summer Study in Japan

Professor Dalton is organizing a summer class that includes a trip to Japan.  You can see the details here.  Information sessions will be

5 p.m. Monday, Nov. 26
11:30 a.m. Tuesday, Dec. 4
Room 203 Swan Business Center

HIS200: Excel and Quantitative History

Last week in HIS200: Historical Methods and Historiography, students presented on their short research projects, which required them to engage with excel and Quantitative History. Our majors did an excellent job identifying possible data to extract for their final research papers and provided detailed analysis in their essays and presentations. Projects ranged from measuring polling data from 1945 to the present on Americans' changing perception of dropping atomic bombs in WWII to using mentions of Joan of Arc from 1700 to the present in Google Books to analyze her popularity at different points in history. 

Bill used Google Books to explore Joan of Arcs mentions from 1700 to the present. He used historical context to explain why her popularity rose and fell during certain decades. 

Noah created a database of battles waged by the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire over a 100-year period to find out when Rome had its most effective fighting force. 

Elizabeth employed an anonymous survey to analyze contemporary views on the impact of music during the Vietnam War.  

Mason gathered polling data from 1945 to the present on how Americans view the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He found that right after the war, Americans highly approved of the action but as the memory of the war faded, approval ratings dropped precipitously. 

Like Bill, Tom used Google Books to track mentions of the famous Japanese samurai, Miyamoto Musashi. He also created a pie chart that looked at the different types of studies that mentioned Musashi (see below).