While there are an increasing number of Digital History projects out there, I'm constantly caught by the larger 'So What?' question that always seems to come up. I don't mean 'so what' in terms of specific content of a given project or field, or area of study. Rather, 'so what?' for history itself. Literary scholars have had much more success in wrestling with this question it seems. In part I suspect it has to do with the very fundamental epistemological and hermeneutic conditions of their interests, as opposed to historians. Both disciplines prioritize the position of the text as the basis of their work - albeit there are literary scholars and historians alike who use other media, but pr
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