Literary Atlas

Here is a reposting of a flyer about an upcoming seminar on digital mapping.

A Literary Atlas for Wales

With Dr. Kieron Smith

Chair: Mike Duggan

Venue: The Nash Lecture Theatre, Kings College, The Strand, London, WC2R 2LS (Note: Entrance on the Strand – A member of the team will be waiting to sign you in at reception)

Date: Wednesday 10th January 2018

Time: 18:00 – 20:00

In this seminar Kieron Smith will introduce the Literary Atlas project to discuss how digital mapping technologies and deep mapping techniques may be used to develop a socio-spatial understanding of Welsh literature.

Literary Atlas is an interdisciplinary digital intervention in the emerging field of Literary Geography. Its primary aim is to build an innovative online atlas providing digital deep maps of twelve English-language novels set in Wales. It hopes to provide insights into the complex relationships between people, places, and literary culture. It asks: what role does literature play in the construction of places? What role does place play in the production of literature? How does literature impact on the ways individuals and communities inhabit places? Can digital deep maps play a role in strengthening community identity? For more information visit: http://literaryatlas.wales/

Mapping Culture in Spain: A Digital Humanities Project

Study Abroad and Digital Humanities Projects

I have developed two digital humanities projects: 1) one for a literature class taught on campus; and 2) another for a study abroad program in Toledo, Spain. In both cases – on campus and off campus, a digital humanities project is enriching. Nevertheless, that which principally drives the enrichment (the map or the textual criticism) depends, interestingly, on place – where the students are.

Digital humanities projects combine geography (a map) and textual criticism (often a video and a text) as the above screenshot visually represents.

Students on campus in the classroom gain a better sense of place when reading the literary texts. However, students on a study-abroad experience already have a heightened sense of place because they are in the country moving through the city space. What they gain is not a greater connection to the built environment (they already enjoy this relationship) but an increased appreciation of the historical/cultural milieu in which the texts occur. In other words, for students on campus, the geographical component (the map) of a digital humanities project radically transforms their experience of a traditional literature class. However, for those on a study-abroad program, it is not the map, but the textual criticism linked to the map that makes both built environment and text come alive.

I ask students both on campus and off campus to make videos that provide historical and cultural information about the various urban sites mentioned in the texts studied. The students on campus are, obviously, only able to include photos in their videos because they cannot fly to the cities to film. The students on a study abroad program, on the other hand, are already in situ and can take live video. This added dynamic allows the students to literally immerse themselves in the culture. The following videos are two examples filmed by graduate students from Northern Illinois University in Toledo, Spain:

 

These videos serve as points of entry into the critical texts that always accompany them.

“Mapping the Marginalized” Digital Humanities Project

For the course FLSP 438/538 Contemporary Spanish Literature at Northern Illinois University, both undergraduate and graduate students collaborated to produce a digital humanities project entitled “Mapping the Marginalized in Contemporary Spanish Literature.” Students read El francotirador paciente by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, El rey del mambo by Johari Gautier Carmona, De Madrid al cielo by Ismael Grasa, and La conquista del aire by Belén Gopegui in order to examine the social, cultural, political, and economic importance of squatters, graffiti artists, and indebted individuals in contemporary Spain. With the guidance of the professor (Stephen Luis Vilaseca) and NIU’s library specialists, students developed three digital maps, two of Madrid and one of Barcelona.

The highlighted areas of this map of Madrid consist of eight urban sites frequented by Cayetano Zenón, the main character of De Madrid al cielo by Ismael Grasa, and two important routes taken by him in the novel. When you click on each of the highlighted areas, texts and videos appear consisting of historical and cultural information as well as insightful, thesis-driven commentaries.

By combining geography and textual criticism as the above screenshot visually represents, students gain two perspectives:

1) a better sense of place when reading the novels; and

2) a greater understanding of how novels make visible the lived city that is absent in maps.

NOVEL  what happens in the book (the content) the artistic structure and form (the way the book is narrated) the social relationships the spatial relationships the city as process (use value)

SOCIETY  the urban sites modern urban plans (the planned               city, conceived by architects,                       functionaries, politicians) the city as product, thing (used to               maximize profits) exchange value

 

Students learn that without novels that highlight how cities are actually experienced by people, some of the ugly results of regeneration and growth – like marginalization – would remain uncontested.

My hope is that this project will grow and serve as a resource for future research on urban cultural studies. Some interesting questions would be: Are there patterns (ways of using the city) that repeat in various novels? Do these patterns change over time? In order to answer these queries, many more novels need to be added to maps spanning various centuries.

Here are what some students had to say about the project:

“This digital humanities project put the urban spaces from Madrid into a whole new perspective. Everything we learned from the okupas to the graffiti in Madrid expanded my knowledge. The talk about urban space also made me see things differently and made me think differently about the places we think are public.” – Alejandro Vizcarra

 

 

“Reading the novels in class, that were very interesting to study, and working on these projects helped me get a better understanding of things like urban spaces in Spain; graffiti and the whole concept of okupa [squatting] were clearer to imagine after producing videos and linking them up on a map.” – Miriam Chico

 

 

Click here to view the actual project.