A.H. Zaki, “The English Councilors,” The Cairo Punch, [1908-1911]
Digital History as a Method of Teaching
In both courses that introduce students to digital humanities methodologies and courses on the history of the Middle East, I teach students how to use digital tools to enhance their research and expand their access to a wider audience.
My interest in digital history is pedagogically motivated. Digital tools have helped my students to think through complex global and border crossing phenomena such as migration, trade, disease and environment, as well as for public history projects.
In my digital history courses, I foreground concrete skills. Students learn how to use digitized source collections and archival databases, produce their own research databases, mapping tools like StoryMaps, podcasting, and how to create online exhibitions and collections. All of the programs and digital interpretive tools that I teach require substantial amounts of pre-planning and a clear argument. Students are able to produce robust digital history projects, but they finish my class better equipped to ask compelling research questions and better prepared to carry out preliminary research.
I teach classes on the Ottoman Empire, the modern Middle East, World War I, global migration history, legal, and digital history. I have taught at Columbia University, University of Miami, University of California, Berkeley, and am presently an Assistant Professor of Islamic World History at the University of West Georgia.
My digital history classes feature in-class labs, in combination with mini-research projects that guide students out side of the classroom. For examples of my digital humanities teaching, please click on the links below to see labs and assignments:
Family Migration History Project
Using Government Records (United States)
In class lab: Spatial Analysis
SYLLABI:
Please click on the links below to see the classes I have taught:
Introduction to Digital History (graduate seminar)
Introduction to Digital History (undergraduate)
World War I and the Making of the Modern Middle East
A Global History of Military Occupation
History of the Modern Middle East
Culture and Sovereignty in the Middle East (seminar)
Egypt between Empires (seminar)