Hi, everyone!

I’m Samantha Hostetler. I am currently a master’s student at George Mason University located in Fairfax, VA. I am an Arkansas native and moved to Fairfax in the summer of 2021. I graduated with my B.A in History and certificate in Digital Humanities from Arkansas State University in spring of 2020, during the emerging pandemic. I took a year off to focus on working in public history and worked at the Arkansas State Archives for several months prior to moving. I then moved to George Mason in order to continue my education in both public history and digital humanities.

I discovered digital humanities at my undergrad university and was intrigued immediately. I had the pleasure of taking several DH classes: Introduction to DH, Critical Archives, Seminar, among a few others. One of my most important courses was the Capstone in the certificate program in which I worked with three others in order to create a website for our DH certificate. We also worked to inform administrators of the growing support DH has in order to better allow it to grow on the Arkansas State campus. I have been able to develop skills in metadata construction, photoshop, Omeka site building, copyright knowledge, etc., throughout undergrad and grad school.

During undergrad, it became apparent that while I loved history in all its forms, public history in particular was my passion. When I took my first DH course, I felt as if I had found an area that suited me best combining history and digital methods. I love writing as much as the next historian, but there is something special about researching and presenting your work online for a much bigger audience. I hope that I can continue to foster this accessibility to the public through my work and projects.

My goal is to one day work in a museum or an archive setting. I really have enjoyed the digitization aspect throughout my college career. Teaching and Learning History is my new course this semester that I hope to learn ways to integrate into my career. I want to be able to incorporate digital teaching techniques into how I might approach collaborative efforts in a professional setting. I have yet to take a teaching course during my college career, so I think that during the duration of this course I will constantly run into new methods and techniques that I haven’t encounter yet, which is exciting.