Arguing with Digital History: Patterns of Historical Interpretation

Abstract

Digital history has only rarely created interpretative or argumentative scholarship that contributes back to disciplinary understandings of the past. The reasons for this are varied: digital historians have often preferred to create scholarship for public audiences, or they have pursued forms of scholarship which do not lend themselves to explicit interpretation. But we contend that digital historians have not had sufficient models of patterns of historical argumentation compatible with digital historical research. In this introduction, we read the articles by Rachel Midura and Leonardo Barleta that appear in this special section, and a series of other articles, in order to show the patterns of historical argumentation that digital historians can pursue. A companion website features versions of the articles by Midura and Barleta, as well as eight additional previously published articles, annotated by their authors to highlight how they developed their historical arguments so they can serve as models for argumentative digital history.