Module 5 is intended to introduce you to basic concepts in historical GIS and spatial history. The readings and discussion will prompt you to think about the implications of (re)situating our understanding of historical events in space, as well as time. The technical activities will provide you with a crash course in QGIS. Forewarned is forearmed: in my opinion, this is the hardest software I teach in this course (and definitely is the hardest software in this year’s required module sequence). The optional activities will provide you with a simpler but proprietary alternative (Google Maps) as well as much more information on QGIS (if you’re interested in learning more about it) in case you want to do mapping for your final project or research.
Readings/Discussion
1. read Ian Gregory and Paul Ell, “GIS and its role in historical research: an introduction” and “Using GIS to visualise historical data,” in Historical GIS: Technologies, Methodologies and Scholarship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) (available via Slack or Basecamp)
2. read Loren Siebert, “Using GIS to Document, Visualize, and Interpret Tokyo’s Spatial History,” Social Science History 24, no. 3 (2000): 537-574.
3. read Daniele Salvoldi, “A Historical Geographical Information System (HGIS) of Nubia Based on the William J. Bankes Archive (1815-1822),” DHQ 11.2 (2017).
4. read Susan Grunewald, “Beyond the Archives: What GIS Mapping Reveals about German POWs in Soviet Russia,” Perspectives on History, February 26, 2019.
5. explore Anne Kelly Knowles, “A Cutting Edge Second Look at the Battle of Gettysburg,” as well as Mapping Inequality, Orbis, and the Pleiades gazetteer. If you’re not totally burnt out on US politics, you can also check out Electing the President.
6. participate in the class discussion
Technical Activities (Required)
1. BEFORE CLASS download/install QGIS; given the difficulty of this software, I recommend (but do not require) you use my QGIS tutorial to preview what we will be doing in class
2. during class, we will explore QGIS using sample data I will provide
Technical Activities (Optional)
3. do my Google Maps tutorial
4. look at the five (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) Programming Historian tutorials on GIS and QGIS
5. explore the GMU InfoGuide resources on Humanities GIS