HIST 4261/5261: Working With Data

University of Colorado Denver, Spring 2025
Prof. Cameron Blevins (he/him/his)
cameron.blevins@ucdenver.edu
Tu/Th 2:00-3:15pm, King Center 205
Office Hours: Weds. 1:30-2:30pm (over Zoom)

Course Description

Welcome to a world of data! From fitness trackers to music recommendations to ChatGPT, data is deeply woven into modern life. This course will give you the technical skills to work with data along with the historical framework to understand its power and limitations. You’ll dive into hands-on coding with Python - learning to wrangle messy datasets, create compelling visualizations, and tell stories through data. But numbers cannot tell the full story. That’s why we’ll also explore the complex history of data itself: How have institutions used (and abused) data? How has data been collected and what social and political forces have shaped its collection? By the end of this course, you’ll have a marketable skillset to harness data for your own purposes along with the critical awareness to do so ethically and effectively.

Note: This course provides 3.0 approved credit hours for the Undergraduate and Graduate Certificate in Digital Studies within the Integration cluster. No prior technical experience or coursework is required to enroll.

Learning Goals

💻 Coding
Process, analyze, and visualize data using the Python programming language

💬 Communication
Transform data into compelling stories, insights, and arguments

📜 History
Understand data as a historical artifact and its role within different historical topics

🧠 Data Literacy
Evaluate data within its larger cultural, social, and political contexts

Acknowledgements

This course has borrowed and benefited from a number of related courses,but most especially those taught by Melanie Walsh, Anelise Shrout, and Zoe LeBlanc. Many thanks! 🙏