BA Politics and Modern History

How can maps help us understand the past? Whether we consider the geography of the Holocaust, the trade winds that fuelled the rise of the British Empire, or the history of epidemic disease, maps are fundamental to grasping some of the most critical problems in early and late modern history. This course introduces students to spatial history, a strand of history that studies the past by studying and making maps. Each week, we will look at a different topic in this emergent field, with readings ranging from themes such as the history of borders, empires and indigenous land, urban decline, to epidemic disease and others. As part of the exercise to think spatially about the past, students will receive basic training in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and will learn to create their own maps. Students will apply those skills to a particular topic and develop their own expertise in that area.

 

No prior technical skills are needed for this course as all training will be provided.

Depending on the COVID situation and possible campus closures, classes will either take place through a combination of asynchronous and synchronous teaching (via Zoom) or in person in the Digital Humanities Lab (Samuel Alexander Building).

HIST32112 is restricted to History programmes, History joint honours programmes, and Euro Studies (please check your programme structure for further details).

This course aims at:

• Exploring the use (and abuse) of maps and spatial concepts in history
• Identifying a historical question amenable to geographical analysis and explore the use of spatial concepts and techniques to answer it
• Developing basic skills in GIS (Geographic Information Systems), cartography, and data visualisation
• Apply skills and concepts relating to spatial history to historical research

 

At the end of this course it is expected that you will be able to:

• Critically evaluate the ways in which historians make and use maps
• Recognise how maps both enhance and limit our understanding of spatial phenomena
• Challenge basic geographical notions that we may take for granted as misconceived and ethnocentric
• Devise alternative ways of understanding geographies of power beyond the model of the nation state

 

At the end of this course it is expected that you will be able to:

• Develop a spatial argument
• Clarify and condense a broad research topic into its manageable essence
• Learn to use geospatial visualisation as a means of generating new questions and revealing historical relations
• Critically reflect on how data modelling choices influence the interpretation of the data
• Develop a critical perspective on maps and learn to identify misuse, oversimplification, or misleading use of colour or symbology and act on your criticism by creating maps of your own

 

At the end of this course it is expected that you will be able to:

• Use GIS and web mapping applications to collect, analyse, and explore spatial data
• Create high quality maps and graphs
• See a digital research project from inception to completion
• Present an argument through visualization and narrative, combining short texts, supporting graphics, figures, and tables

 

At the end of this course it is expected that you will be able to:

• Work collaboratively with a team with diverse skills and potentially conflicting visions
• Gather, clean, and synthesise data from a diverse range of sources
• Present information and arguments orally, verbally and visually with due regard to the target audience
• Think creatively how to develop and communicate your work

 

Project proposal and draft

0%

Presentation of a digital map

30%

Final Project

70%

 

Feedback method	Formative or Summative
Oral feedback on intermediate project requirements as they are completed	Formative
30 minutes of the weekly seminars will be dedicated to discussing project progress and address issues as soon as they arise. Week 9 is entirely dedicated to project troubleshooting ahead of the final submission. Moreover, students are encouraged to seek formative feedback during seminars and in consultation hours.	Formative
Detailed written feedback on final collaborative project and essay, designed to include advice on improving future performance.	Summative

 

Amrith, Sunil, Unruly Waters: How Mountain Rivers and Monsoons Have Shaped South Asia’s History (Penguin: 2018).

Brown, Wendy: Walled States, Waning Sovereignty (Zone: 2010).

Gordon, Colin: Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City (University of Pennsylvania Press: 2008)

Hämäläinen, Pekka, The Comanche Empire (Yale University Press: 2009).

Lewis, Martin and Ka¿ren Wigen: The Myth of Continents. A Critique of Metageography (University of California Press: 1997).

Monmonier, Mark, How to Lie with Maps (University of Chicago Press: 1991).

Mullaney, Thomas, Christian Henriot, Jeffrey Snyder-Reinke, David McClure, and Glen Worthey, The Chinese Deathscape: Grave Reform in Modern China (Stanford University Press: 2019) [http://chinesedeathscape.org].

Smallman-Raynor, Matthew, and Andrew Cliff. Atlas of Epidemic Britain: A Twentieth Century Picture (Oxford University Press: 2012).

Tufte, Edward R., The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (Graphics Press: 1983).

White, Richard, “What is Spatial History?” Spatial History Lab: Working Paper (2010).