lovehistory.net

Disclaimer: I have not had a chance to use this weeks tool’s or view the websites yet, but I really enjoyed this week’s readings (ST:TNG reference much?) and I wanted to write about them before all the ideas I had melted out of my brain.

On February 25, 2010, I tweeted this tweet:

I was referencing The Railway Journey: The Industrialization and Perception of Time and Space by Wolfgang Schivelbusch (and Friday Night Lights, possibly the best show ever), which was one of those delightful books that completely blew my mind when I read it because it presented a way of seeing the world that I’d never thought of before. I pestered my co-workers for weeks with the concepts I’d learned from this book, and alas my poor Twitter followers suffered as well. Anyway, reading this week’s readings, this book immediately leapt to the forefront of my mind, and I was delighted to see Joanna Guldi namedrop it in her essay on history’s reconceptualization of space in relation to the emergence of nations and the nation-state (another favorite subject of mine).

What struck me most about all of these articles was how their authors argued that exploring spatial history and non-linear thinking is not a break from traditional scholarship but instead is part of an existent trend or tradition in academia. What’s new/unproven/unexplored/underdeveloped is the digital component. I think they have valid points – I found Alan Liu’s argument that linearity is an ideology to be presented in a particularly compelling manner – but I sensed that in emphasizing the continuity of spatial history and visualization, these authors all sought to establish a legitimacy for a field that is moving increasingly (and perhaps to some, threateningly) toward a digital medium.

The readings from the Scholarly Communications Institute seem to attempt to ease this transition by identifying problems and anxieties surrounding the digital medium and presenting solutions or means of seeking solutions. But often in these readings I felt there was a real separation between arguing for new ways of doing history using these improved or mutating techniques/digital mediums and demonstrating the ways in which they have been used. Maybe that’s a lack of close reading on my part, or maybe it’s symptomatic of where digital humanities as a field is as a whole. I am now going to go play with the tools and view the websites for the week, as I think that will help me solve the disconnect.

And I will close this blog post by returning to what I opened the post with: The Railway Journey. That book is an amazing exploration of how people construct space and time. It is an excellent example of how these types of investigations shape our field even (and especially?) when presented in a more traditional form/package. I think the authors of our readings this week were very wise to historicize their arguments. Being presented with examples of how these thought processes and methodologies have been applied to more traditional works and how temporal and spatial thinking have developed over time won me over because it proved a link or continuity to me between “the way it’s been done” and “the way it will be done.” Seeing that link helped me understand the usefulness and importance of the new technological tools that are now or will soon be at our disposal. In a way I’m sure all the authors we’ve read this semester tried to make the same case, but something about these readings for me proved especially effective.

Edit: After working with the tools and websites, I’ll reiterate that I find this weeks readings to be some of the most accessible. You asked how we would apply these tools to our work. In my own interests, I can see applying this kind of modelling to my previous studies of the advent of the age of the automobile and how it shaped the landscape and design of our country, from its role in the development of suburbs to the building of our interstate highways. Trying to relate this to my Grant Proposal Project, data could be modeled to show how ideas spread globally in order to build/flesh out different feminist movements.