Writing History in the Digital Age

How does historical writing change when technology enables everyone to publish online? Leslie Madsen-Brooks opens up the conversation with her essay “‘I Nevertheless Am a Historian’: Digital Historical Practice and Malpractice around Black Confederate Soldiers,” which investigates how false claims about U.S. Civil War history arose and have been combated on the Internet. Other contributors focus on the world’s most popular crowd-sourced encyclopedia, Wikipedia. Over 30 million registered users have collectively contributed to this open-access knowledge platform, launched in 2001. Yet Wikipedia has generated controversy for its democratization of historical expertise and authorship, the practice of a so-called neutral point of view (NPOV) as its editorial stance, and conflict among educators on whether it should be referenced in or even considered as part of academic writing. Robert Wolff’s essay “The Historian’s Craft, Popular Memory, and Wikipedia” explores what we can learn from anal

How does historical writing change when technology enables everyone to publish online? Leslie Madsen-Brooks opens up the conversation with her essay “‘I Nevertheless Am a Historian’: Digital Historical Practice and Malpractice around Black Confederate Soldiers,” which investigates how false claims about U.S. Civil War history arose and have been combated on the Internet. Other contributors focus on the world’s most popular crowd-sourced encyclopedia, Wikipedia. Over 30 million registered users have collectively contributed to this open-access knowledge platform, launched in 2001. Yet Wikipedia