Education: BA, History, University of Utah, 2011; MA, History, Central Michigan University, 2014; MA, History, University of Rochester, 2015.
Biography: Camden Burd is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History. His research explores the environmental transformation of the American landscape over the course of the nineteenth century.
Camden researches the networks of communication between plant nurserymen and their influence in the acquisition and distribution of plant material during an era of rapid American expansion. More about his research interests and professional experience can be found on his department page.
In addition to his role as an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in the Digital Humanities, Camden currently serves as the TEI and Technologies Manager for the Seward Family Digital Archive. While maintaining the project website, he also teaches XML coding to undergraduate students enrolled in project-related courses.
Camden is also the PI for The Ornament of Empire digital project. This history-based digital project harness big data, GIS, and JS visualizations to track and map the economic and ecological influence of plant nurserymen in nineteenth-century America.
Blog Posts
Collections, Provenance, and TEI with the William Blake Archive
By Camden Burd
As part of my duties as an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in the Digital Humanities, I am required to serve as a Research Assistant for one of the many digital humanities projects at the University of Rochester. I was drawn to the William Blake Archive for a several reasons. First, the Archive is a foundational DH project. Its depth and multi-institutional workflow serves as a model for onlookers hoping to recreate a successful digital collaboration….. more »
Digital Storytelling for the 21st Century
By Camden Burd
Over the course of the semester the students of Professor Thomas Fleischman’s Earth, Wind, Water, Fire: An Environmental History of Everywhere class have challenged the “traditional” homework assignment.Rather than churn out a 15-20 page research paper, Fleischman has encouraged his students to think about engaging audiences in new ways. The assignment—HearUR—a podcast series produced by the Department of History at the University of Rochester trains students to think about historical writing in new ways…. more »
By Camden Burd
Photogrammetry is a process in which several images of an object, building, or landscape are digitally stitched together to create a three-dimensional representation. By collecting a series of images from different depths and angles historians can recreate historic structures and landscapes as tools for historical interpretation, argumentation, as well as a device for learning…. more »
Recap: The DH Graduate Student and the Job Market
By Camden Burd
Victoria Szabo discusses the challenges and opportunities that graduate students face in the Digital Humanities… more »
The Family We Thought We Knew: How Digital Annotations Challenge Historians’ Assumptions
By Camden Burd
In the five years since the project’s inception students and employees of the Seward Family Digital Archive have turned over every historical stone to find the people, places, and literature mentioned in the Seward Family Papers… more »