New Tools for the Humanities: Visualizing Complex Spatial Data

FAIN: PR-50088-10

Trustees of Indiana University, Indianapolis (Indianapolis, IN 46202-3288)
David J. Bodenhamer (Project Director: August 2009 to August 2013)

The development of a prototype tool to explore and to visualize geospatial data in the humanities using as a test bed a preexisting interactive Web mapping site on religious adherence in the United States in the 20th century.

This proposal, New Tools for the Humanities: Visualizing Complex Spatial Data, requests funding to develop new approaches and new tools to enhance the use of spatial data in the humanities. It uses web-based Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology in an existing product, the North American Religion Atlas, but seeks to make it both easier to use and much more powerful as a research tool through new types of visualizations already developed and tested in prototype by the project collaborators.

Associated Products

The Spatial Humanities: GIS and the Future of Humanities Scholarship (Book)
Title: The Spatial Humanities: GIS and the Future of Humanities Scholarship
Editor: David J. Bodenhamer, John Corrigan, and Trevor M. Harris
Abstract: Geographic information systems (GIS) have spurred a renewed interest in the influence of geographical space on human behavior and cultural development. Ideally GIS enables humanities scholars to discover relationships of memory, artifact, and experience that exist in a particular place and across time. Although successfully used by other disciplines, efforts by humanists to apply GIS and the spatial analytic method in their studies have been limited and halting. The Spatial Humanities aims to re-orient—and perhaps revolutionize—humanities scholarship by critically engaging the technology and specifically directing it to the subject matter of the humanities. To this end, the contributors explore the potential of spatial methods such as text-based geographical analysis, multimedia GIS, animated maps, deep contingency, deep mapping, and the geo-spatial semantic web.
Year: 2010
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Type: Edited Volume
ISBN: 9780253013637
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

Digital Atlas of American Religion (Web Resource)
Title: Digital Atlas of American Religion
Author: David Bodenhamer
Abstract: Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, DAAR presents ways for scholars to examine data at varying scales and with multiple dimensions. For studies using data from the US census, voting statistics, or any other spatially-referenced data, the tools permit researchers to group and map categories easily and in new ways or to aggregate data by user-defined classifications. The tools enhance GIS to make maps more complex, more visually dynamic, and more easily interpreted.
Year: 2012
Primary URL: http://religionatlas.org

The Spatialization of History: A New Web Paradigm (Book Section)
Title: The Spatialization of History: A New Web Paradigm
Author: David J Bodenhamer
Editor: Frédéric Clavert and Sergend Noiret
Abstract: Digital practices in the field of history have become more and more widespread in recent decades, but contemporary historians have often tended to remain on the sidelines of this trend. This book, which covers a wide range of digital practices, tools and methods, will serve both as a solid grounding for historians keen to learn how information technology can be applied to contemporary history.
Year: 2013
Publisher: PIE-Peter Lang
Book Title: Contemporary History in the Digital Age
ISBN: 978-2-87574-04

Beyond GIS: Geospatial Technologies and the Future of History (Book Section)
Title: Beyond GIS: Geospatial Technologies and the Future of History
Author: David J Bodenhamer
Editor: Alexander von Lünen and Charles Travis,
Abstract: This book brings together authors from Geography and History to discuss the value of GIS for historical research. The focus, however, will not be on the "how", but on the "why" of GIS in history.
Year: 2012
Publisher: Springer
Book Title: History and GIS: Epistemologies, Considerations and Reflections
ISBN: 9789400750081

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