A Braided Narrative for Digital History

Abstract

​ Computational digital historians have tended to elucidate their methods rather than advance interpretative arguments. While this attention to method is salutary, given the absence of methodological discussion in history generally, it is not clear how computational historians can advance historical arguments while also explaining methods. Drawing on a classic essay by David Hackett Fischer, "The Braided Narrative: Substance and Form in Social History," this essay proposes a model for argumentative writing in computational digital history. Rather than using models such a methods section drawn from other disciplines, a braided narrative weaves together methodology and interpretation. The two strands strengthen one another when digital historians can elucidate how their methods and interpretations are mutually constitutive. A Braided Narrative for Digital History Lincoln A. Mullen, George Mason University "It is a rare monograph today which is not festooned with lorenz curves and punctuated with numbers." That is how the historian David Hackett Fischer described the current state of his discipline in 1976 (132). Substitute network diagrams for Lorenz curves and blog posts for monographs, and one would have a fair description of the current state of scholarship in digital history. It is apparent to observers of digital history, as it was apparent when Fischer commented on the rise of social history, that digital history trades in methods more than most other forms of history. Digital historians delight in writing and reading tutorials on how to use tools and software for their research and teaching; they teach workshops on those methods and line up to attend them. Blog posts in the field more often recount the steps that the researcher took than the conclusions that he or she came to. And digital history is fortunate to have a burgeoning methodological literature for humanities computing, including ​The Programming Historian​, ​The Historians' Macroscope​, and several books on specific programming 1 2