History for the Chronically Online: From Text to TikTok

Institution: Carleton University (Carleton University)
Category: Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Language: English

Course Description

“He’s an 8 but… he had his last wife beheaded :/”

This course will teach students how to translate historical research into an innovative format of their choosing. Projects might take the form of a podcast episode, digital exhibition, TikTok series, imagined Day-in-the-Life vlogs or Instagram/Snapchat stories, a Twitter thread, graphic comic-strip, cross stitch project, GIS digital map, or fictionalized diary entry, among other creative options.

Students will learn about the tools historians use to conduct research and share their findings with a general public in the lead up to producing their own final projects. Together we’ll discover different types of historical sources and engage in training sessions on a variety of methods public historians use in their work, including oral history, museum curating, historical performance, digital mapping, creative non-fiction writing, and podcasting, just to name a few!
Top