From the Current Research on Digital History repository, I chose “Networks of Piety and Slavery among Late Eighteenth-Century Rural Maryland Catholics” and “Silent No More: Women as Significant Political Intermediaries in Ottoman Algeria.” “Networks of Piety and Slavery” not only deals with Catholicism in early American history but along with “Silent No More,” both pieces discuss women’s history and recovering names from the records that may not have been seen otherwise. Each of these aspects are things I am personally interested in – which might be obvious, considering I probably would not have selected them otherwise!
“Networks of Piety and Slavery” was written by Rachel Bohlmann and Suzanna Krivulskaya, with research done probably from around the time that they were both at University of Notre Dame. Bohlmann is (and was) a librarian at their Hesburgh Library (working in rare books and American history), and she had received her Ph.D. in American history from University of Iowa.[1] Krivulskaya is an associate professor at California State University San Marcos with their Ph.D. in History from Notre Dame.[2] Interestingly, neither scholar has specific training listed in digital methods, other than what Bohlmann gained from their MLIS degree. The names gathered for the project were people who had contributed monetarily to the printing of the first Catholic bible in the United States, and they referenced archival records to find further information on the people, both enslaved and free. Digitally, they used mapping techniques to place where these people were located, looking for major centers, and tools to “visualize networks within this community, including historical connections between slavery and piety.”[3] The argument for this piece is that “[s]lavery and religion formed connective tissue in post-Revolutionary Maryland,” though this is just part of the research that will expand to include other centers.[4] I believe this work could be done by hand, but it is inherently easier to use a program that would place people geographically, while also connecting the relationships between them.
“Silent No More” was written by Ashley Sanders, whose Ph.D. is in History and aside from teaching, is currently the Vice Chair of Digital Humanities at UCLA.[5] While she “put together an initial data set,” she did have help from “three UCLA doctoral candidates – Veronica Dean, Robert Farley, and Suleiman Hodali” in the completion of the study.[6] The argument of this work is that “Algerian women were essential intercultural mediators and conduits to power” for Ottoman men through marriage, which the women involved would have to agree to.[7] Rather than specifically patrilineal lines of power, Sanders found that through marriage and relationship, women bound certain people to the government and allowed them to achieve or retain power, quite the opposite of what the assumption has been for most power exchanges. To find these results, they used text mining to extract named and unnamed people and social network visualization to illustrate relationships. While this might have been able to be completed by hand or without the assistance of a computer, they may not have been able to find as many links as they did. Additionally, once those links had been found, they were able to sift for the “betweenness centrality scores” to determine who ended up connecting the most amount of people.[8] With this level of data it may have been possible “by hand,” but I can absolutely see this being similar to what we’ve talked about with big data, as in far too much data to go through even with four people on the project. The addition of digital tools to this project was particularly needed.
While projects used similar digital tools, they could have been done manually. However, the addition of these tools greatly increased the possibility of success, as well as timely results. It also lays the groundwork for future work, both within each of these projects and as examples to show what others can do with digital history.
[1] “Rachel Bohlmann,” Hesburgh Libraries Employees, University of Notre Dame, https://directory.library.nd.edu/directory/employees/rbohlman.
[2] “Curriculum Vitae,” Suzanna Krivulskaya, https://www.suzannakrivulskaya.com/cv.
[3] Rachel Bohlmann and Suzanna Krivulskaya. "Networks of Piety and Slavery among Late Eighteenth-Century Rural Maryland Catholics," Current Research in Digital History 2 (2019). https://doi.org/10.31835/crdh.2019.09.
[4] Bohlmann and Krivulskaya, “Networks of Piety and Slavery.”
[5] “About Ashley,” Ashley R. Sanders, Ph.D., https://ashleyrsanders.com.
[6] Ashely Sanders, "Silent No More: Women as Significant Political Intermediaries in Ottoman Algeria," Current Research in Digital History 3 (2020), https://doi.org/10.31835/crdh.2020.05.
[7] Sanders, "Silent No More.”
[8] Sanders, “Silent No More.”