Where are we going?
The spatial turn is one of the largest shifts in the field in the last several decades. How do we make sense of state, city, county, or other spatial data, and what do we do with it?
This week we will:
- Think about the underlying theory of map making and map reading
- Understand cultural and ethical concepts of what can and cannot be mapped
- Practice the basics of translating a spreadsheet to a map visualization
| Start | Meet | Post |
| Mar 29 | Mar 31 | Apr 2 |
Module Outline
Wednesday Agenda
During our Wednesday meeting, we’ll troubleshoot the optional Maps assignment.
Reading
Everyone
General background and technical methods:
- What is Spatial History?
- Lincoln Mullen, Spatial History Workshop The readings here are from a workshop and include some walkthroughs of activities. We’ll be doing our own assignment below, but the assigned sections and the sections I’m not assigning are good references if you want to do some significant mapping in your final project. If you decide to go through the activities here on your own this week or at a later date, please feel free to ask on Slack if you hit a snag. You do not need to do the activities discussed in these readings.
- Introduction, ending at the “Web mapping tools” section
- Map Literacy
- Narrative Maps
- Georectification
- Spatial Data
- Deep Maps
Projects and historical thinking:
- Explore one or more of the projects by the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond.
- Mapping the 1854 Cholera Outbreak This project isn’t important in and of itself, but it’s an example of what you can do with maps + the story function in Tableau
- The Mapping of Massacres in Australia
- The Little-Seen Maps and Stories of Women in Cartography
- Historical Maps Made by 19th Century Women Cartographers
Grad
- Rose-Redwood, Reuben, Natchee Blu Barnd, Annita Hetoevėhotohke’e Lucchesi, Sharon Dias, and Wil Patrick. “Decolonizing the Map: Recentering Indigenous Mappings.” Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization 55, no. 3 (September 1, 2020): 151–62. https://doi.org/10.3138/cart.53.3.intro.
- Cameron Blevins, Space, Nation, and the Triumph of Region: A View of the World from Houston, Journal of American History, Volume 101, Issue 1, June 2014, Pages 122–147, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jau184
Discussion Starter
Tasks
- Read all the assigned material
- Watch and respond to the discussion starter video in the #module8 channel on Slack
- OPTIONAL Do the Maps lesson. This looks very long because I outline for you how to do several different methods in two different programs, but to do this assignment you need only choose one method in one program and make a post on the course site. Your assignment need not be polished or complete (look at the number of items I add in the examples; that’s a good amount to aim for to get a feel for how the program works).