This project analyzes the ways advances in science and technology were translated into narrative and visual form for public consumption during the Spanish-Cuban-American war to persuade them in favor of a U.S. expansionist agenda. To do this, the research focuses on the ways in which science and technology informed the methods by which knowledge was overtly and covertly gathered, represented, and diffused in written and visual form to influence foreign policy. This project utilizes digital-humanities methodology in a large multilingual, transnational corpus of 19th century documents to understand the mechanisms of that influence.

Dr. Arlene J. Diaz is Associate Professor in the Department of History. She has published articles on the history of Venezuela, Cuba, and Brazil. Her book, Female Citizens, Patriarchs, and the Law in Venezuela, 1786-1904 was published by Nebraska University Press in 2004. She is now working on a book that applies digital history methods to uncover the role of knowledge, science, technology and espionage during the Spanish-Cuban-American War and in the making of the American empire. As a principal investigator for the Indiana University History Learning Project, she has co-authored some articles in the scholarship of teaching and learning.