Discussion of readings for session 8: GIS #29
Comments
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In the Murrieta, Gregory and Donaldson article (2017), I found it interesting how they could map the lakes in the English Lake District and analyse the topographical literature. GIS aids in influencing how academics study space and landscape. "Such works are, after all, not merely descriptive inventories of places, monuments and buildings; they are narratives that offer first-hand accounts of the journeys of specific individuals. In order to visualise such works adequately we must employ techniques that are capable of representing the places they mention not as discrete locations, but as a series of interconnected points along the line of transit that constitutes the narrator’s tour. As noted at the beginning of this article, is only by assessing works of travel writing as journeys that we can understand how the writers of those works encountered the places and landmarks they described." The Seifried and Gardner (2019) article immensely informative. What stood out to me was "the procedure we developed can reliably produce valid least-cost models for historical records that preserve varying levels of information. Looking forward, the CART-ography Project is aiming to produce accurate representations of all the historical routes through the Mani peninsula from antiquity to the modern day. Our ultimate goal is to shed light on the relationship between travelers’ routes throughout history and evaluate the ways in which early written records correspond to the known archaeological |
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The Murrieta-Flores, Donaldson, and Gregory article was right up my alley as I love literary analysis. Perhaps my favourite part of the article was the conclusion drawn about Young’s and Pennant’s descriptions of Sharp Fell being influenced by the miserable conditions on the roadway, as made more obvious by GIS tech, rather than simply late 18th century literary convention. I would really love if this was taken further to give a really close reading of a textual landscape enriched with the information drawn from GIS! I also wonder how useful the technology would be with fictional texts that concern real landscapes as well, whether it might help uncover some of the rationale behind authorial choices and descriptions. Whilst the technologies used are obviously very complex and not probably accessible to the wider public, it seems to me that projects like this would also work wonderfully with a crowdsourcing aspect - rather than mapping from a work of literature, as has been done in this study, it would be really interesting to see how oral histories and traditions could be integrated into GIS technology. |
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Murrieta-Flores, P., C. Donaldson, and I. Gregory. 2017. “GIS and Literary History: Advancing Digital Humanities research through the Spatial Analysis of historical travel writing and topographical literature": I found this article a really interesting read, though I may be a little biased as I am very fond of the Lake District! The aim of the project - to show that spatial analysis can facilitate more nuanced interpretations of works of travel writing and topographical literature - was met through the study of three eighteenth century influential British travellers, Thomas Gray, Thomas Pennant and Arthur Young, all of whom documented their journeys through the Lake District. The project built on Lancaster University’s “Mapping the Lakes” research (2007/8). The paper recognises the limitations of previous research and mapping, namely the restrains of point-based maps, and uses this to improve upon research in the literary field, using GIS to demonstrate ‘the analysis of qualitative human phenomena, such as the experience of visiting a place or travelling from one place to another’. I particularly enjoyed the “human” being recognised in such literary GIS research; we don’t travel dot-to-dot, every decision is shaped by our ‘geographic experiences and the spatial relationships’, and so-called “fixed” maps don’t (and cannot) account for social engagement and other humane motivations. I thought the distinction between ‘tourist’ and ‘traveller’ was particularly apt. Rather importantly though, it was noted that literary GIS studies are not interpretive, they are to be seen as more of an aid, guiding critical enquiry and facilitating research. While the project showed that all three travellers’ journeys correlated with the natural corridors and existing routes of the Lake District at the time, with roads being seen to have had a decided influence over the cultural construction of the Lake District in the eighteenth century, we can make informed interpretations about their journeys, but this is not concrete proof. Ultimately though, using such historical travel literature as the basis for the research proved that these travel writings are more than descriptive records, attempting to broaden the reader’s awareness of the geography of the Lake District. Each writer sought to give their reader a sense of the surrounding area, whilst documenting the social, geographic and economic interconnectivity of the entire region. GIS can be used to show historical travel writing and topographical literature is not descriptive, but narrative. |
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