Ride the Storm: Navigating Through Unstable Periods / Katerina Rudko (Belka G...
Cwwppt
1. Civil War Washington
“With Civil War Washington, an interdisciplinary team of
scholars has set out to study this transformation, one too
vast and multi-faceted for treatment by traditional print
scholarship.”
-Susan C. Lawrence, Kenneth M. Price, and Kenneth J.
Winkle
From multiple perspectives as a case study of social, political, cultural, and medical/scientific transitions provoked or accelerated by the Civil War. It went about the civil war in a different way than what we are really told. The site goes to tell about the real people and what they really did for us, and not only what the soldiers did but people in hospitals as well. The site draws on the methods of many fields to create a digital resource that chronicles the war's impact on the city.
The site is backed by National Endowment for the Humanities and is also produced by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln so there is not a lot that is really wrong or bad about this website. However, the one negative thing about the site is that there is a lot of information listed as “unknown” when talking about medical history.When it comes to methodologies, the site is close to perfect.
As for layout of the site, the school did a marvelous job yet again. Everything that is needs to be looked up is put under certain tabs and able to break them down into other highlighted URLs. The front page gives a very clean and professional look to the viewer. It shows 6 different places the site is able to take the reader, such as maps or even interpretations. The FAQ also gives good answers to many questions such as, “What is Civil War Washington” and the response actually says, “Civil War Washington is a digital humanities project that allows users to study, visualize, and theorize the complex changes in the city of Washington, DC between 1860 and 1865 through a collection of datasets, visual works, texts, and maps”
One of the sites main focuses, is to tell the story of the hospitals. There were so many hospitals that the site really isn’t able to keep up. They use what resources they have to visually and physically tell about what all happened during the Civil War. The site talks about all the new inversions that go along with the war, such as new and improved medical devices, so not everyone had to be amputated. . The site follows almost every admittance to many hospitals and what had happened to them and weather they lived or passes away.
There are many things that this site consist of, however there are many things that make this site positive. The site gives a lot of information about Washington during the Civil War using sources and archives. The site uses visuals to define certain parts of Washington during the Civil War and newspaper articles to show actual events in history. The site helps the reader see the soldiers were real people who really fought and died for the country we call free. The site helps readers understand that the civil war wasn’t just a war, but history that one can see, feel and understand, which shows the digital humanities side of the site.
A lot of information on one page causing a brain overflow of information. The only other thing that is a negative is that there is a lot of unknown information with the site when talking about medical information.
This site is extremely easy to use. I believe that the audience is geared towards both students and researchers for the simple fact that when the user wishes to read texts there is a short small tidbit for students to glance at and read, and then there is an extended proportion for the researcher to read and study. It is a well-put together portion.Students of all levels are able to comprehend this, people should be able to read and understand what is being said.
With the site being a digital humanities project, the site could charge visitors to see the information, however the site proves to be agreeable and gives the reader all the free text they need. This shows the sharing and promoting side to the digital humanities. The site does a good job at being accurate by giving all the sources that the site used. Rather than the visitor quoting the site the site gives the visitor the exact place that they got the information. When it comes to what this site does for the bigger picture, I believe it shows that information can be put into a fun site to learn and use as a contributing factor. The site has a lot to offer the world and gives many examples on doing that. As for the interdisciplinary field of digital humanities, this site commutes in ways in which it shows old information in a new way and by making history technological, it helps students and researches look at history in a new way
