The New Social History after the Digital Turn

In this first presentation, we will introduce the Digital Harrisburg project in light of the educational contexts of our institutions and the specific goals of promoting digital proficiencies and collaborations for our students. We will highlight the effects of the broader digital turn on the new social history. We highlight how fine-grained demographic and spatial data can address long-standing questions about race, ethnicity, class, and gender in American urban centers including the place and identity of immigrants and immigrant society in industrial America, and the urban progressivism that gave rise to reform movements such as City Beautiful. Demographic data linked to geographic information systems create powerful new tools for understanding the beautification movement in spatial terms.