Course Description
GIS is a technology that allows users to store and analyze information spatially. Exploration of its usefulness to historians and how to employ it in our own work. Over the length of the semester, students will work on a mapping project related to their own interests and research.
Athena Title
History and GIS
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
Basic skills using ArcMap; familiarity with how GIS has been applied to historical research; ability to create and populate shapefiles, create maps, and ask relevant historical questions.
Topical Outline
Week 1: Introduction Course overview Week 2: GIS and the humanities David J. Bodenhamer, John Corrigan, and Trevor M. Harris, eds., The Spatial Humanities: GIS and the Future of Humanities Scholarship (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2010) Exercise 1: Find a map in a history book or article Distribute on the Tuesday before class to HISTORYGIS@listserv.uga.edu Week 3: ArcGIS, 1 ArcGIS instruction. Meet in 414 Caldwell Hall, computer lab Week 4: ArcGIS, 2 ArcGIS instruction. Meet in 414 Caldwell Hall, computer lab Week 5: ArcGIS, 3 ArcGIS instruction. Meet in 414 Caldwell Hall, computer lab Week 6: ArcGIS, 4 ArcGIS instruction. Meet in 414 Caldwell Hall, computer lab Week 7: History and GIS 9/28 Donald A. DeBats and Mark Lethbridge, “GIS and the City: Nineteenth-Century Residential Patterns,” Historical Geography 33 (2005). http://www.historical- geography.net/volume_33.htm David H. Dejong,’”Abandoned Little by Little’: The 1914 Pima Adjudication Survey, Water Deprivation, and Farming on the Pima Reservation,” Agricultural History 81, no. 1 (Winter, 2007): 36-69. (JSTOR) Wendy Bigler, “Using GIS to Investigate Fine-scale Spatial Patterns in Historical American Indian Agriculture,” Historical Geography 33 (2005). http://www.historical- geography.net/volume_33.htm Geoff Cunfer, “Causes of the Dust Bowl,” in Anne Kelly Knowles, ed., Past Time, Past Place: GIS for History (Redlands, CA: ESRI Press, 2002): 93-104. (On reserve, password=mapping) Aaron Sheehan-Dean, “Similarity and Difference in the Antebellum North and South,” in Anne Kelly Knowles, ed., Past Time, Past Place: GIS for History (Redlands, CA: ESRI Press, 2002): 35- 50. (On reserve, password=mapping) William G. Thomas III and Edward L. Ayers, “The Differences Slavery Made: A Close Analysis of Two American Communities,” http://www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/AHR/ Benjamin C. Ray, “The Geography of Witchcraft Accusations in 1692 Salem Village,” William and Mary Quarterly vol. 65, no. 3 (July, 2008): 449-78. (JSTOR) Week 8: Project Presentations Exercise 2: Sketch out your project Roundtable discussion Week 9: About Maps J.B. Harley, “Maps, Knowledge, and Power,” in The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments, Denis Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 277- 312. (Distributed on the listserv) J.B. Harley, “Rereading Maps of the Columbian Encounter,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82, no. 3 (1992): 522-42. (JSTOR) Barbara Belyea, “Inland Journeys, Native Maps,” in G. Malcolm Lewis, ed., Cartographic Encounters: Perspectives on Native American Mapmaking and Map Use (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 135-55. (On reserve, password=mapping) Gregory A. Waselkov, “Indian Maps of the Colonial Southeast,” in Waselkov, Wood, and Hatley., Powhatan’s Mantle: Indians in the Colonial Southeast (Second ed., Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 435-502. (On reserve, password=mapping) G. Malcolm Lewis, “Frontier Encounters in the Field, 1511- 1925,” in G. Malcolm Lewis, ed., Cartographic Encounters: Perspectives on Native American Mapmaking and Map Use (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 9-32. (On reserve, password=mapping) Exercise 3: Find an historic map. Distribute on the Tuesday before class to HISTORYGIS@listserv.uga.edu Week 10: About Making Maps John Krygier and Denis Wood, Making Maps: A Visual Guide to Map Design for GIS (Second ed., New York: Guilford Press, 2011) Exercise 4: Make a map. Distribute on the Tuesday before class to HISTORYGIS@listserv.uga.edu Week 11: History and GIS, 2 Brian Donahue, The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord (New Haven: Yale University, 2004) Week 12: About Writing Exercise 5: Write an introduction to your paper Distribute on the Tuesday before class to HISTORYGIS@listserv.uga.edu Week 13: The Web and Crowd-Sourcing Michael F. Goodchild, “Citizens as Sensors: The World of Volunteered Geography,” GeoJournal 69, no. 4 (2007): 211-221.(Springer Standard Collection) Jason Farman, “Mapping the Digital Empire: Google Earth and the Process of Postmodern Cartography,” New Media & Society 12, no. 6 (Sep., 2010): 869-88. (On reserve, password=mapping.) Roy Rosenzweig, “Can History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past,” Journal of American History 93, no. 1 (June, 2006): 117-46. http://chnm.gmu.edu/essays-on-history-new- media/essays/?essayid=42 The Spatial History Project http://www.stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/cgi- bin/site/index.php The Digital Scholarship Lab http://dsl.richmond.edu/ Week 14: Project Presentations Exercise 6: Present your project. Roundtable discussions Week 15: Wrapping Up Projects due