Blog #5: Humanities and GIS

Okay, disclaimer of honesty: at first I thought this whole GIS (Geographic Information Systems) thing was going to be super boring.
But then I started searching around and I felt like I had just found the coolest things ever! Which is why I'm going to highlight a few projects here, because I just couldn't choose. They're all so amazing!

Lewis and Clark Across Missouri

Official blurb:

This website serves geographical information and maps that are products of the LEWIS AND CLARK HISTORIC LANDSCAPE PROJECT that has been conducted at the Geographic Resources Center (GRC), Department of Geography, University of Missouri in partnership with the Missouri State Archives, Office of the Missouri Secretary of State. With the primary goals to geo-reference, digitize, and map all of the retrievable information from the Lewis and Clark journals and the 18th and 19th-century land survey notes along the Big River Corridors of the state of Missouri, this effort should serve as a significant educational contribution to the national commemoration of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial (2003-2006).
Specific campsite maps, photo-realistic images of important river landmarks, animated virtual Missouri River travel, and an interactive map server offering various layers of geographical data on the Expedition's outward and homeward journeys joined with the natural and cultural history of the Missouri River corridor are all currently offered here. We hope your visit both informs and excites your geographical and historical imaginations on the Missouri of old.

Things I love: the website is simple, but still provides interest. There are a number of different maps, which are interactive, and a list accompanies each map so that you can browse through campsite or landmark names as well. I think this is a cool website and would be useful in teaching, especially in elementary or high school. I could also see tourism value here as well. The virtual river travel was the coolest thing to me. The only way it could get better is by being there in person. There are also a lot of links to related information.
One thing I wish they had done is made a composite map, where all the routes were plotted, so they could be seen together. It would have made a nice comparison.

Map of Early Modern London

Official blurb:

The Map of Early Modern London (MoEML) maps the streets, sites, and significant boundaries of late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century London (1560–1640). Taking the Agas map as its platform, the project links encyclopedia-style articles, scholarly work, student work, editions, and literary texts to the places mentioned therein. Students will view the landmarks of Shakespeare’s London and learn about the history and culture of the city in which he lived and worked. Teachers will find the map and encyclopedia useful in teaching Renaissance plays and other texts set in London. Scholars are welcome to contribute articles, links, sources, or compilations of data.

This project is a little different, and it seems to take more of a wiki type of approach. The map is used as a visual basis for discovering information about streets and landmarks. There are also some complete texts (I assume early modern and from London) and references to places in literature. This is also a Canadian project! Unfortunately there is not a lot of information on the site yet, but even having the high-quality map available to look at up close, with labels, is commendable enough. Because this project is on-going, applications to contribute are available, which I think is great!

Google Lit Trips

Official blurb:

Google Lit Trips are free downloadable files that mark the journeys of characters from famous literature on the surface of Google Earth. At each location along the journey there are placemarks with pop-up windows containing a variety of resources including relevant media, thought provoking discussion starters, and links to supplementary information about “real world” references made in that particular portion of the story.

First off, I love how the website has links according to grade, right up at the top. That said, at first I was confused about what to do. The website was also a bit messy, so it took me a while to figure out how to navigate it. It also requires that you download Google Earth and the lit trip file, which is kind of annoying and a turn off. It would be nicer if everything was available on the internet for easy access.

Mapping the Republic of Letters

Official blurb:

"Mapping the Republic of Letters” is a collaborative, interdisciplinary, and international project in the digital humanities, centered at Stanford University. Since 2008, we have been creating visualizations to analyze “big data” relating to the world of early-modern scholars. We focus primarily on their correspondence, travel, and social networks. While we make use of quantitative metrics to examine the scope and dimensions of our data, we remain committed to the qualitative methodologies of the humanities. We actively encourage collaborations with other projects.

At first I was impressed by the clean design of this website, but then with the minimal links and information I found it rather confusing in the end. There is lots of information on the tools they have developed/in development, but no way to access these amazing projects! Perhaps it is because of the newness of the project. Anyway, it focuses on literature in relation to geography. Some of the case studies include John Locke, Benjamin Franklin, Galileo, Voltaire, and more.


So, this is just a selection of GIS projects in the humanities which I found intriguing. I'm sure there are hundreds more out there. I think that using maps is a great way to learn. For me, at least, I find the visual aid very useful. Furthermore, organizing information this way can be useful to a wide variety of people: elementary school and high school, as in Lewis and Clark or Lit Trips, or upper level university scholars, such as the map of London or Republic of Letters. I think GIS could be applied to almost anything really, which is part of its appeal. Everything is based in a place, and therefore can be mapped. I'm even considering it in relation to my project for this course, which I discussed below.