Geo-Historical Visualization: Mapping the Human Past

The practice of historical research, analysis, and publication have been fundamentally transformed by the arrival of digital and interactive technologies. Scholarly communication has already been vastly transformed by online databases, self-publsiehd websites, and blogs. One area of exciting potential lies at the intersection of two developments: a) the "spatial turn" in the humanities, which has involved a rediscovery of space and place as constitutive of the phenomena of t"the past" that historians seek to represent (social formation, power, development, etc), and b) the availablity of online platforms that make powerful mapping and visualization tools available to those with now technical training in Geographic Information Science (GIS). Google Earth/Google Maps has emerged as a site for new forms of historical analysis and presentations, and such open-source, non-profit collaboration platforms as as HyperCities promise fundamentally new forms of scholarly communication for historians. Ethington will sketch the revolutionary potential of online geo-historical visualization platforms.