After more than 150 years of analysis, the Civil War’s transition into the digital age may be long overdue.
Edward Ayers, professor of history and president of the University of Richmond, seeks to change the way we study and access history by transferring the information normally found in hardcopy textbooks into a digital format. Once information has been digitized, it can be accessed online by a wide audience, while graphs and maps can be represented in an interactive format.
Ayers, a vocal proponent of efforts to digitize the humanities, said he believes the digitization process may make history more relevant, accessible and interesting.
Ayers presented “The Shape of the Civil War” on Tuesday, March 3, where he described the inability of current, static graphical representations to create an accurate depiction of the Civil War’s complexities. The digitization process, however, allows for a more complex and in-depth depiction of both the Civil War and history in general.
“If you leave the paper, there are all kinds of possibilities in the digital world of manipulability and transparency and volume that you can’t have on paper,” Ayers said.
Although Ayers said he believes humans have a natural hunger for history, he has found students are often bored with the subject despite its relevance to their lives. Digitizing information to make it more relevant may provide the antidote.
“How can everything that happened before today be boring?” Ayers said. “You actually have to try to kill it with multiple choice tests and memorization. I believe that if we would just let people see what history actually is, they would find it interesting.”
Ayers has applied his passion for digitization and history to several digital projects, including the “Valley of the Shadow” project, which allowed Internet users to explore accounts of the Civil War from primary sources.
“In scholarship, we have this strange thing where we’ve walled ourselves off from the same revolution that digital journalism went through,” Ayers said. “When it comes, it will be like a tidal wave that will really damage scholarship in general.”
To make the difficult transition period as painless as possible, Ayers has also helped found the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities and the Virginia Center for Digital History and currently works with the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond. He also serves as a co-host of the nationally syndicated radio program “BackStory with The American History Guys.”
“It is just one example of Dr. Ayers’ practice of making history accessible to the public and encouraging us, as Americans, to understand our role of being shaped by and continuing to shape American history,” said Charles Israel, associate dean for academic affairs and associate professor of history at Auburn.
Students, however, aren’t the only ones who deserve more comprehensive access to history, according to Ayers, who has tried to give the general public more access as well.
“I just think (history) is one of the most crucial points of understanding ourselves,” Ayers said. “I want people to be able to read the newspaper or online and think, ‘I’ve seen this pattern before,’ or ‘I know how we got here.’”
Not only did the Civil War occur in South, it also forced America to deal with one of the biggest problems in its history: slavery. Ayers said he also believed the Civil War demonstrates the democratic process shouldn’t be taken for granted, which is important to remember as America continues to struggle with aftermath of slavery.
As the Civil War continues to undergo its digital transformation, a wider audience may be able to access the past and apply their knowledge to the present.
“I thought his idea of pushing the boundaries of history and making history accessible to everyone was powerful,” said Benjamin Shiver, senior in history.
In addition to work with digital history, Ayers has won the Bancroft Prize and the Albert J. Beveridge Award and has been nominated as a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. He has also been awarded the National Humanities Medal, the National Professor of the Year award and Fellow of the American Academy for Arts and Sciences.
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