Course Syllabus

HSTCMP 202 / 2021 Fall

WORLD WARS I & II: DIGITAL HISTORY

Mondays/Wednesdays, 1:30-3:20, Kane Hall 220

The First and Second World Wars were human-made catastrophes that engulfed the globe and killed upwards of eighty million people. Each war remade the world. Their aftershocks reverberate today and continue to shape global politics.

 

HOW THIS CLASS MEETS  & WHERE TO FIND STUFF

• Class meets in person. While attending class all students must follow the UW COVID-19 Face Covering Policy.
• This is Canvas page is the main hub for the class. Assignments are submitted through Canvas. The syllabus is below.
  
• All the lectures are recorded. If you're not feeling well and have one or more symptoms on the university's list (including a runny nose or just feeling tired) don't come to in-person class; watch the lecture video instead. Most videos are in Panopto; I make a note next to each date on the list below about where the recording is.

 

TEACHING STAFF

Laurie Marhoefer, PhD, Associate Professor and Jon Bridgman Endowed Professor of History

marl@uw.edu

(Class co-created in 2020 with Taylor Soja, PhC.)

Marhoefer office hours: Tuesdays, 10 am - 11 am, on Zoom unless otherwise indicated, Zoom location and sign up for Marhoefer office hours here

Teaching Assistant Ting-chieh (David) Ou-yang

davidoy@uw.edu

Ou Yang office hours: 8-10 am Fridays, on Zoom unless otherwise indicated. Zoom location and sign up for David Ou Yang office hours here.

THERE'S AN EXTERNAL WEBSITE, TOO

It's here, all will be explained.

INTRO TO THE CLASS

This class explores the history of both wars, focusing on military technology, ethics, racism, empire, gender and sexuality, and social history. We will use digital methods to uncover and share stories from the wars that shaped the modern world. No prior tech experience needed. 

This course has two core objectives: 

• to investigate the histories of World Wars I and II, introducing students to major narratives and questions along the way, and 
• to teach students to use and evaluate digitized historical data and the data science and digital humanities tools that can be used to analyze and represent the World Wars to an audience outside of our class.

Major themes in the history of the world wars include:

• What roles did gender and sexuality play in politics and warfare?
• What ethical problems did the wars raise and how did people react to them?
• Is there such a thing as a “good” war?
• What role did technological development play in warfare?
  
• What roles did racism and imperialism play in warfare?
• Are civilians properly targets of modern warfare?
  
• What were the long-term political consequences of the wars, from the fate of communism to the character of international law to the Cold War to decolonization?

This class is digital!

The final project in the class is a digital project that examines the history of the First or Second World War. No prior knowledge of digital tools or digital humanities is required. Absolute beginners are welcome and encouraged. At the same time, people who already have digital skills are just as welcome and will find much that is new to them. Your project will be in one of two areas (you pick): (a) a data science project (data visualization or analysis) or b) a podcast.

You can check out the project directions here.

 

The three digital workshops

    Three workshops in digital humanities and data skills form the spine of this course. These workshops begin in lecture, and students complete online modules at home. They're on the external website and we'll explain it all. The aim of these workshops and the final project is to teach students to transfer their skills as historians – critically evaluating different kinds of information and sources – to the realm of digital work and data science.

FYI IMAGES ON THIS PAGE AND THE COURSE CANVAS ICON THINGEE

The above image is from this amazing project in the UK. The course icon image is a painting of the 1916 Battle of Magdhaba (Camel Corps at Magdhaba by H. Septimus Power (1926), more info here.) Yes, they used camels in WWI.

CLASS INFO, POLICIES, ALL THAT STUFF

Books to buy!

We'll read all sorts of cool stuff, but most of it we'll provide to you as PDFs or free e-books. You only have to buy or otherwise acquire (borrow from your local library if possible) three. If you can, get these books before the quarter starts! They're ordered at the UW bookstore FREE SHIPPING:

• Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, any edition, e-book or otherwise. (You may be able to find a free PDF copy somewhere on the interwebs; it's also available used for 5 bucks on giantsoulsuckingwebretailer.com.)
• George Takei, They Called Us Enemy (Top Shelf, 2019), runs about $20, a used copy is fine.
• EB Sledge, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa (you can use any edition; there's a new edition but you may be able to find an older edition for sale for cheap somewhere.)

Assignments

Details on your assignments are here.

Grading

Here's information about the numeric grade scale we use, the UW grade scale, and how we calculate final grades.

Course Policies Vis a Vis Increased Stress and Anxiety in the Pandemic, due to Violence, Wildfires, etc.

Details on course policies in times of increased stress and anxiety here.

Trigger Warning

This class includes content about sexual violence (though only occasionally) as well as extreme violence that is not sexual (that kind of violence comes up a lot) as well as other difficult topics, including suicide, racism, and mass murder. If that's a daunting challenge, reach out to us. Everyone -- including professional historians -- finds some of the stuff we'll study hard to read about and to talk about. It's best not to read the more difficult material at night -- Japan at War, stuff on the Holocaust, some parts of All Quiet, stuff on the a-bomb, etc.). These readings are traumatic and your brain will do best if you don't read them at night, close to bed time, but rather read them during the day. We've put some trigger warnings below on particularly horrific readings, but if you're worried, reach out to us because we haven't necessarily flagged everything, this blanket warning is meant to cover the entire class.

Policy on Late Work and Extensions

Read here.

Student Conduct, Class Rules, and Plagiarism:

All students please read this.

History department policies, including on COVID, that apply in this class

All students please read, very important History Dept. guidelines and rules for class.

How to Do Citations In This Class (footnotes, etc.)

Explained here.

If for some reason we have to move to Zoom: Zoom guidelines

Here!

Learning Objectives

Here are the learning objectives, dudes!

What happens if for some reason (such as a COVID exposure in class) we have to go to a remote learning model?

Then the lectures will be on Zoom and nothing else will change. Lectures will still be recorded; you can watch them later, via the Zoom link on Canvas.

Where are the lecture videos?

If the class was in-person, the video is usually in Panopto, you access it from the Canvas page, click the 'Panopto' tab at left. If Prof. M. taught it on Zoom, the video is in Zoom, access from Canvas, click the 'Zoom' tab at left. The video for the intro day is an exception, it is linked below.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

SCHEDULE OF CLASS

Week 1

September 29, Wednesday - Intro. What is Military History? How is this class digital?

• Nothing to read except this syllabus -- please read the whole thing carefully before class
  
• There a Panopto recording of most of the class under the Panopto tab at left, click there. It unfortunately cuts out about 20 minutes from the end of class; the rest of the class was about the digital portion of the class. To get that material, read the syllabus, taking a look at the final project directions as you do so, and spend a little bit of time looking at the external website.
• A recording of the complete audio from today's class is here
• The slides from today are here

 

Week 2

October 4, Monday - Camps Pt. 1 in the Empires of 1900      Today's slides are here, video is under Panopto Recordings tab at left       

• John H Morrow, The Great War: An Imperial History (London: Routledge, 2004), Chapter 1 “The Origins of War, 1871-1914” (pages 1-36) online at UW Library
• Winston Churchill, The River War Vol. II: An Historical Account of the Re-Conquest of the Soudan (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1899) pages 155-164, 198-200, 219-227
  • • Read this introduction to the document first!!!! It is a short (1 .5 pages) document that will help you a lot.
    • Then, read these sections of The River War.
• Maja Lynn, “Mapping the Herero and Nama Genocide, 1904-1907,” ARCGIS Storymaps (Read all content on this website) https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/94376513466f416f9ea86f4c4e51122b 

-- FYI, use this optional resource to follow along on our study of WWI. The 1914-1918 Online Timeline has links at each event on their timeline which take you to detailed secondary source articles written by leading scholars:

• Optional firing mechanism of a Maxim gun, Smithsonian video -- what makes a gun a machine?
• “Timeline of the FWW,” 1914-1918 Online International Encyclopedia of the First World War

 

October 5 optional Prof. M. talk on Zoom, Queer & Trans Nazi Germany + Holocaust, register here

 

October 6, Wednesday

The slides for today are here. Class was recorded; access the recording under the Zoom tab in Canvas.

1914, The Great War Begins / Digital Workshop 1: What is Data? What are the Digital Humanities? (Workshop discussed today in class; you'll complete it for homework, it's due Friday.)

• 3 short accounts of the beginning of the war by Charles Walter Barton/Julian Grenfell/Franz Blumenfeld 
• Chapters 1 ("Hello, Reader") & Chapter 2 ("Hello, World"), Meredith Broussard, Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2018). Whole book available as a UW Library ebook.
• OPTIONAL    Jeremy Black, brief overview, First World War (From Jeremy Black, A Century of Conflict: War, 1914-2014 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015).

Friday, October 8 - First workshop assignment due, upload to Canvas.

• Click here for Workshop #1 directions!

 

Week 3

October 11, Monday - Soldiers  -- slides are here, video is in Panopto (tab at left)

• Start reading All Quiet on the Western Front (hereafter AQWF) (assignment for today: CH 1-3)

• David Olusoga, “Chapter 1: ‘Weltkrieg’ A New Concept: The World’s War,” in The World’s War (London: Head of Zeus, 2014), 40 pages
• Two Pamphlets Concerning African American Troops on the Western Front (3 pages)
• Readings about colonial troops and laborers in Europe:
  • Students with last names A-M only, read: A Chief is a Chief by the People: An Autobiography of Stimela Jason Jingoes (London, OUP 1975) (20 pages, this is a primary source)
    • [the PDF is linked here, but a text-only version is also available through the Hathi Trust online.]
      
  • Students with last names N-Z only, read: Chapter 5 “To Meet Death Far Away: The Senegalese in the Trenches,” Joe Lunn, Memoirs of the Maelstrom: A Senegalese Oral History of the First WW (Portsmouth NH: Heinemann 1999) (27 pages, this is a secondary source that quotes extensively from primary sources)
    • [the PDF is linked here, but a text-only version is also available through the Hathi Trust online.]
      

 

October 13, Wednesday - Civilians & Home Fronts -- Slides are here, video is in Panopto

• AQWF (CH 4, 5, and 6. We're skipping Chapter 7, when he goes home on leave and sees his family, but read it if you're interested, it's really good.)
• Part of Chapter 7 “Civilians Behind the Wire,” (p. 203-219) of Tammy Proctor, Civilians in a World at War 1914-1918 (New York: NYU Press, 2010). (Optional: Whole book available online at UW Library if you are interested. )
• Archival accounts by WWI nurses (p. 1-11)
  

Saturday, October 16 - Quiz A due.

 

Week 4

Monday, October 18 - 1915 & The Armenian Genocide      Slides here, lecture video in Panopto

• AQWF (Chapters 8 and 9)
• Two short documents on the Armenian Genocide (Leslie Davis, U. S. Consul, “Report on Armenian Genocide,” 1915 & Viscount Bryce (British), “Report on Atrocities Against Armenians,” 1915)
• Selections from the 1907 Hague Convention Agreement (5 pages)
• Wilfred Owen, "Dulce et Decorum Est" (1920). If you are interested, watch the analysis video from Dr. Santanu Das  at the top of this British Library page on Owen's poem, or read his analysis below the video. We will discuss Owen's poem in class.

 

Wednesday, October 20 - Technology in WWI: Subs, Gas, Guns / Digital Workshop 2: Analyzing and Visualizing Historical Data          Slides here, video in Panopto

• Chapter 3 ("Hello, AI") and Chapter 7 ("Machine Learning: The DL on ML"), in Broussard, Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World. Whole book available online at UW Library.
• “Go Set A Watchman While we Kill the Mockingbird in Cold Blood, with Cats and Other People” Abstract from Digital Humanities Conference 2016, Kracow (Poland).
• Voigt, Camp, Vinodkumar et al., “Language from Police Body Camera Footage Shows Racial Disparities in Officer Respect,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114(25) (2017) 6521-6526.

 

Friday, October 22 - Workshop 2 Assignment DUE, upload to Canvas.

• You'll find the workshop assignment details here, just click here for Workshop #2 directions!

 

Week 5

Monday, October 25 - 1916, the Turning Point? 1917, The Russian Revolution, America Joins the War

Recording of class in Panopto. Slides here.

• AQWF (Chapter 10)
• Chapter 8 “Civil War and Revolution,” in Tammy Proctor, Civilians in a World At War 1914-1918 (pages 239-266). Whole book available online at UW Library if you are interested.

 

Wednesday, October 27 - 1918, The Day(s) the War Ended…  Slides here, video in Panopto -- FYI we talked a lot about the quiz in class today

• Finish AQWF (Chapters 11 and 12) be ready to discuss the whole book
• Listen to Nancy Bristow (author of American Pandemic and leading expert on the 1918-19 flu pandemic) give a lecture on June 2, 2020 for the UW History Department “Pandemic Then (And Now): Covid-19 Through the Lens of the 1918 Influenza Crisis” (1 hour, starts at about 5 mins in -- feel free to skip the introduction of her and go right to her lecture. She talks a lot about Trump -- it's fine to ignore that, it's a bit dated now. Please listen to the questions at the end and her answers, some of her best material is there).

Saturday, October 30, 7 pm - Quiz B due-- quiz closes at 7 pm on Oct 30 finish it before then

Week 6

Monday, November 1 - Interwar, Part I              Video in Panopto and slides here

• Letter from “S.” to Magnus Hirschfeld and the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, 1915

 

Wednesday, November 3 - - Digital Workshop 3: Public Digital History (Workshop discussed today in class; you'll complete it for homework, it's due next week but feel free to turn it in early.)   Video in Panopto, Slides here

For today: Read Cohen's article on Nazis on Wikipedia. Then, listen and compare the content, narrative styles, and goals of these podcasts. Then begin Sledge. For the podcasts: take notes and come ready to talk about them. All three links will take you to podcast transcripts and a link to play the podcasts. You can also find them, especially the RadioLab episode, "on Spotify, Stitcher, in the Apple App Store, or wherever you get your podcasts." 

• Noam Cohen, "One Woman's Mission to Rewrite Nazi History on Wikipedia," Wired 9/7/2021
• RadioLab (WNYC Studios) Episode “Fu-Go” (April 25, 2019), featuring our very own Ross Coen , 35 mins https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/fu-go
• Angela King, "These Black Women Got the Mail Delivered in Europe in WWII. A Push is On to Honor the 6888th," KUOW (Sept. 1 2020) https://www.kuow.org/stories/these-black-women-got-the-mail-delivered-in-europe-in-ww2-a-push-is-on-to-honor-the-6888th
• Angela King, "A Conversation with One of the Last Survivors of the 6888th - The Only Black Women's Unit to Serve Overseas in WW2," KUOW (Sept. 2 2020) https://www.kuow.org/stories/a-conversation-with-one-of-the-surviving-women-from-the-6888th-unit
• Sledge, With the Old Breed, read Sledge's Preface (you can skip the introduction) and Chapters 1 and 2 (to page 41)
• OPTIONAL: Read about our own Ross Coen's book on Fu-Go.

 

Week 7

November 8, Monday - The Second World War, Japanese Invasion of China through German Invasion of Poland to Japan’s Surrender, an Overview         Slides here, video in Panopto.

• Jeremy Black, overview of the Second World War (excerpt from Black, A Century of Conflict)
• Kort, Columbia Guide to Hiroshima and the Bomb, part of Chapter 3 on the Pacific War. (Just the parts on the war's beginning and end. Feel free to read the whole chapter if you want, it's good. Here's a link; optional reading.)

 

November 10, Wednesday - The German-Soviet War & the Turning Point (?) at Stalingrad    Video in Panopto, slides here

• Karl Fuchs, “A German Soldier’s Letters from the Eastern Front,” 1941.
• Sledge, With the Old Breed, 43-104 (this is a lot of pages; it's ok to skim. Get the gist of it.)
• OPTIONAL Glennys Young on civilians at Stalingrad and a heroic Spanish teacher who saved lives.

 

*November 11 is Veteran's Day and the anniversary of the WWI Armistice

 

November 12, Friday - Workshop 3 assignment due, upload to Canvas. 

• Click here for workshop directions.

 

Week 8

November 15, Monday  -

NO CLASS TODAY

** PLEASE DO THE ASSIGNED READING, WE WILL DISCUSS IT WEDNESDAY IN CLASS

Japan’s Empire /Discussing the Final Digital Project

**Please note that all of these readings are very troubling and contain graphic descriptions of violence, including kids dying horribly, suicide, and the desecration of dead bodies. If you need to skim parts of them that's OK.

Everyone read:  Final Project Proposal Assignment Directions Here!

Last names A-L read:

• Cook and Cook, Japan at War, Part A. Cook and Cook's classic book is a collection of oral histories of people about the Pacific War.

Last names M-Z read:

• Cook and Cook, Japan at War, Part B.
  

Everyone read:

• Sledge, With the Old Breed, 195-203; 261-315. The first section here is about the beginning of Sledge's experience of the Battle of Okinawa; the second section is the end of his experience in that battle and his conclusions. You may be a little confused because we're skipping around in his book. Bear with me. I am trying to give you enough reading that you get a real sense for his perspective and of his experience of the battle without assigning too many pages.

 

November 17, Wednesday  -  Night Witches, Rubble Frauen, and Hamsters: Women and the Second World War

Slides here, video in Panopto. *Note that today we didn't cover the material that's on the syllabus for today; we will do it after Thanksgiving, on Nov. 29.

• Soviet sniper oral histories (primary source)
• If you are not already, please be aware of the final project proposal assignment directions; your proposal is due next week!

 

November 20, Saturday - Quiz C due

 

Week 9

Monday, November 22 - NO CLASS

Start Takei (which you must buy) need to have it finished by next week. Read it over Thanksgiving as necessary. It's a quick read.

 

Tuesday, November 23 - Final project proposal due (No Class)

directions for this assignment are here

 

Wednesday, November 24 - Thanksgiving/No Class

• Read Takei this week, have the whole book done by Dec. 1.
  

 

Week 10

November 29, Monday

Camps II, Part I (includes the Holocaust)        Slides here, video in Panopto

• George Takei, They Called Us Enemy (please read the whole book for today!)
• Look at this photograph of the flag raising on Iwo Jima
• Make sure you read the stuff for November 17, we will discuss it today and it'll be on the next quiz.

 

December 1, Wednesday

CAMPS II, Day 2 (includes the Holocaust) 

Slides here, video in Panopto

** Assigned reading/listening/viewing includes graphic violence.

• Hinda Kibort, Holocaust oral history. (from Lewin, Witness to the Holocaust: An Oral History (1990), reprinted in ed. Katharine Luldi, Sources of the Making of the West (New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2012), 254-8)
  
• Susan Glenn:  Listen to Prof. Susan Glenn talk about the Holocaust as an event in American history, about how the US responded, including after 1945.

 

Week 11

December 6, Monday -The Tech of WWII: The Computer, The Long-Range Bomber, and the Nuclear Bomb Slides here, video in Panopto

• Kort, ed. Columbia Guide to Hiroshima and the Bomb, Chapter 4 on the decision to drop the bomb.
• Kort, Chapter 5 on the Japanese regime in the end phase of the war. Optional: Explore more of the Kort ebook, especially the section on key questions and the documents he includes (I'd say especially the documents from within the Japanese government).
• Sheldon Garon, “On the Transnational Destruction of Cities: What Japan and the United States Learned from the Bombing of Britain and Germany in the Second World War,” Past and Present 247 (1) (2020), 235-271.

 

December 8, Wednesday - 1945, the Zero Hour (?) & the World the Wars Made: War Crimes Trials -- Did the Ethics of War Change? The Cold War. Decolonization -- Did the Ethics of Foreign Affairs Change?    slides here, video in Panopto

• Listen to this podcast on an American airstrike in Syria; it's about a half-hour long. There's a transcript of it at the link if you prefer to read.

December 10, Friday  - Quiz D due

Wednesday, December 15 - FINAL DIGITAL PROJECT DUE