Fun with maps!
This map shows the place names in the poem Roman de la Violette and those of the prose adaptation in two different layers (@DJWrisley).
“Spatiality and Digital Mapping” was held in Keating Hall on the Fordham University Rose Hill campus on October 29, 2014. The program was organized by the Fordham Medieval Studies Program and co-sponsored by the Digital Humanities Working Group. Roughly 15 people attended the two hour workshop.
Dr. David Joseph Wrisley (@DJWrisley) is Associate Professor in the Department of English and the Civilization Sequence Program at the American University of Beirut. His research is in medieval comparative literatures and digital humanities. He is working on a project about space, place and time in medieval texts entitled Visualizing Medieval Places. The event was co-led by David Levine (@DavidScott014) of Fordham University.
The first section of the workshop was a brief introduction to the idea of “space” theory, mapping projects, and mapping elements. The first slides, on what Wrisley described as “the spatial turn,” were foundational theory that I used to remind myself why we make maps. While I might not have completely understood the theory, key phrases like “helps researchers” and “frame inquiries” stood out to me. It brought to mind Moretti, who notes in Graphs, Maps, and Trees that maps offer “a model narrative universe which rearranges its components in a non-trivial way, and may bring some hidden patterns to the surface.”[1] In other words, a map is a model to guide humanists, it is not an end in itself.
The next few slides of the presentation focused on the difference between mapping and GIS (Geographic Information Systems). Unlike maps, which visualize spatial data in the form of lines, shapes, and/or text on a map canvas, GIS is much more advanced in what it can accomplish. Some of the features of GIS are layering data, performing statistical calculations for pattern detection, and georectifying.
Despite the large scale GIS is capable of undertaking, Wrisley was quick to note that some humanists still produce maps with little data and significant ambiguity. There is a principle, known as “Pareto GIS” (or the 80/20 rule) which states that 20% of GIS functionality is sufficient to garner 80% of the geospatial humanities benefits.[2] This made me think of Kretzschmar’s argument that “the best sort of GIS is the one that the analyst can make and use.” [3] By that he means humanists don’t need to necessarily use expensive commercial software like ArcGIS, which has powerful analytic capabilities, to perform their research. Some great research can be done simply by using some of the tools introduced in the second half of this workshop.
Rounding out the first half of the workshop, Wrisley and Levine both talked briefly about their research and showed us some visualizations. It was very interesting to see, especially in Wrisley’s example, where GIS allows humanists to juxtapose or overlay their data onto the data of others. Really exciting research questions can be challenged, asked, and answered when this happens.
The second section of the workshop involved hands-on activities. The first activity involved georeferencing a list of place names using different gazetteers, or geographical dictionaries (geonames.org, wikipedia.org, pleiades.stoa.org, maps.google.com). We were asked to find the spatial data for five distinct places, from Mount Candavia (20.316667, 41.116667) to a particular building on Fordham’s campus (40.858657, -73.882844). This activity illustrated that spatial data does exist—you just might have to do some digging to find it!
The second activity involved Google Maps, which was described as a place to deal with small amounts of data rather quickly. Using Wrisley’s own structured data, we learned how to build upon pre-existing maps. This activity also familiarized us with some terminology mentioned in the first part of the workshop, such as Raster layer: the “background” on which your data is plotted; Vector: the data visualized on a raster layer; Glyph: the image the user chooses to represent a chosen data point; Polygon: a two- or three-dimensional shape on a mapping surface.
The next activity showcased using Google Fusion Tables to make quick maps when you don’t have the spatial data. Google Fusion Tables uses the Google API (Application Programming Interface) to find this data, which it then plots on a map (with a noted degree of ambiguity). I was impressed by the speed and relative accuracy of this program.
In our last bit of time, Wrisley walked us through an introduction to CartoDB, a web-based mapping software. Like the Google Fusion Tables, I was incredibly impressed by what this software could do.
It is important to note that in the Google Maps, Google Fusion Tables, and CartoDB activities, we were using Wrisley’s data sets. While this was clearly done for time-saving instructional purposes, it also illustrated the truly collaborative nature of digital humanities. Humanists do not always have to “reinvent the wheel” by painstakingly digging up spatial data using gazetteers. The key, as Kretzschmar noted, is that DHers build models that will be usable for others besides the maker-and vice versa.[3]
Kudos to Dr. Wrisley and Fordham University for a great workshop.
References
[1] Moretti F. (2005). Graphs, maps, trees: Abstract models for a literary history. London: Verso.
[2] Harris TM, Rouse LJ, Bergeron S. The Geospatial Semantic Web, Pareto GIS, and the Humanities. Retrieved from http://www.gallbladder-research.org/media/media_135483_en.pdf
[3] Kretzschmar Jr WA. (2014). “GIS for Language and Literary Study” in Literary Studies in the Digital Age. Retrieved from http://dlsanthology.commons.mla.org/