Hello, my name is Rukhsora Orifova, I use she/her pronouns. I am a junior majoring in Anthropology and Sociology with a minor in English Literature.
Looking through the course schedule, I find learning about the history of the Indigenous community very exciting. I have not taken many classes that dedicate their classes to the history of Indigenous people, so I am confident I will learn a lot from this class. I am also very excited to learn how to read historical documents and learn how to evaluate and apply them to my research. I think there is a big difference between reading and learning about some data and being able to use and apply it in the correct way, so I am hoping I can learn that too with history. Also, I am very curious about the fourth-week topic: Indigenous Narratives and Video Gaming. I love video games, and the in-class technical activity of that week’s interactive designs to use interfaces seems really cool. Storytelling traditions, oral history, and podcasting sounds also very exciting. Last but not least learning about digital art history, and visual, and material culture is something that I will enjoy for sure!
I did not have prior knowledge about digital history before taking this class, but so far what I learned about it is that it is about learning and looking at history by using digital tools and methods such as digital archives, data visualizations, podcasts, presentations, maps, timelines, etc.
Overall, although I am very new to this topic and way of learning, I am very hopeful that I will get to explore a lot of ways of research and it will be really beneficial in my other classes too.
Welcome to the class, Rukhsora! Thank you for introducing yourself and I’m glad you’re here. I really enjoyed reading about your interest in Native American history– I hope we get to cover a wide variety of topics that center Indigenous voices. It seems like a handful of students are also interested in Week 4, and I am excited because it’s the first time that I am incorporating video game studies into a course. Even though we think of video games as a form of entertainment, I think we have a good opportunity to think critically about video games as tools for communicating of information. Interestingly, all three of the games assigned in week 4 were inherently designed to be “educational” in addition to being entertaining. I’m sure we’ll weigh the pros and cons of how these ideas were carried out.
As you describe in your post, we will be covering a broad array to tools/concepts/methods. The idea is to get a sense of how these things work so that you may be able to apply these lessons as solutions beyond the class. Thanks for your thoughts and I am equally excited about the weeks ahead!