In my main field of research, I am looking at the way outer space is viewed/handled in Soviet and U.S. culture in the 20th century. For instance, what happened in U.S. culture between the 1960’s and the 1970’s to change people’s perception of outer space conquest from admirable to unnecessary? How is this reflected in culture?  How could I use digital tools to research these questions and represent the answers digitally?

From discussion with our class instructor, Dr. Church, I will find primary sources in public media such as newspaper articles and Time magazine archives; government sources such as NASA archives, State of the Union addresses etc.  Text-mining, web-scraping and Python were mentioned. These are all tools and techniques that I will be learning in the next several weeks.   I am excited to see how it all turns out.