HIST2F90: Money & Power in the Atlantic World

Visualizing History

Big question:


What do maps, images, materials, and digital tools add to our understanding of the past?


Learning outcomes


At the end of this week you should be able to:

Ultimately, the goal here is to explore new ways of finding evidence in our sources. Don't just tell us what the images can tell us - give us examples of evidence you can draw from these images. What does each image add to our understanding of that topic?


Background

Historians spend a great deal of time working with words. We read written and printed documents. We write essays, books, and blogs. But, how do we read images? Or, better yet, how can we use visualizations of text to help us ask different questions about the past? 

This workshop is in THREE parts. The first part will introduce you to how to read images, in this case maps, as primary sources. You will take a closer look at one of the maps from an earlier lesson, consider its component parts, and formulate an analysis of the map as a source.  In the second part, you will have the opportunity to experiment with Voyant Tools as a method of pre-reading a text using OCR (optical character recognition) software. Finally, you will have the opportunity to explore the materiality of texts by comparing a handwritten document with a modern transcription.

Does this mean that you need to create three posts and three responses? The short answer is no, but you should experiment with at least TWO parts of the workshop. So, you can work with Voyant Tools, and the Title page options, the Map and Title Page option, or the Map and Voyant Tools options. 

How to choose?

Well...Assignment Two requires that you either approach a text using the pre-reading and distant reading skills outlined here in Parts 2 and 3 OR to read and compare maps using the visual skills in part 1 of this workshop. So, consider this an opportunity to get your historical hands dirty and practice your skills before you apply them in your next assignment!

Part One: How to read a map!

This section of the workshop shifts your focus from finding digital ways to visualize texts to reading images, and in this particular case, maps as historical documents. 



Take a closer look at one or two of the following maps:
We will be using these maps to explore reading maps as historical sources, so keep them close at hand, and choose one, or at most two of them to analyze in the discussions. We are already familiar with the process of analyzing primary sources from our toolbox of Historical Thinking Skills, and for the purposes of this course, we can also consider many of the maps we have shown you to be primary sources. If so, then what are the questions we need to ask when we analyze maps?

A good starting place is to think through some the following questions:
Some of the answers to these questions will be quite evident from the maps themselves. Others may require that you sleuth a little to uncover the answers. A quick search for the cartographer will provide you with some basic biographical information that you may find useful. Try not to go overboard here! Remember, your focus should be the map itself

It is also important to understand the various parts of a map, as they can help you to better read the map, and use the appropriate vocabulary in your analyses. Check out the following blog by Matt Knutzen on the New York Public Library entitled, Elements of Cartography. Try to locate some of these elements on your map. You may find it helpful to take a screenshot, identify the elements on your image, and share it in the forums.

Your post for this section asks you to analyze your chosen map, or an aspect of it to keep your thoughts succinct, using the questions above to guide you. Remember to evaluate the map in historical context, rather than contemporary context! In most cases, you will not find a completely accurate geographical representation of the map based on our current knowledge, but we are more interested in what the maps say about the culture that produced them!


One element we'd like you to think about it the cartouche, The cartouche usually contains information about the map - the creator, the engraver, where their located, the year its made, and so on - but are often decorated in ways that are meant to convey meaning about the map. Below, for example, we see the illustration from the cartouche of Morden and Moll's map of the Americas, and one sees very quickly the framework within which these cartographers (or their employers, or whoever commissioned the map) see this map. Here we see clearly that in this illustration, finding new souls for the Christian chuches seems less important than the wealth being generated. What else does this cartouche suggest about the place of maps and mapping in early European colonisation?


Your post for this section asks you to analyze your chosen map, or an aspect of it to keep your thoughts succinct, using the questions above to guide you. Remember to evaluate the map in historical context, rather than contemporary context! In most cases, you will not find a completely accurate geographical representation of the map based on our current knowledge, but we are more interested in what the maps say about the culture that produced them!

Don't forget to comment on one another's experiences. Did you read the same maps? Did you come up with different readings? Find ways to help one another explore the maps as historical sources.

Part Two: Pre-Reading and Distant Reading with Voyant Tools



Over the last several weeks we have worked together to transcribe a section of an eighteenth-century text describing European explorations in South America and the Slave Trade that ensued there. The resulting digital files are valuable for historical research because once these texts are in a digital format, they are machine-readable. This format allows you (and other historians that we might share our files with) several powerful options for text analysis. Scholars sometimes use the term "distant reading" (or sometimes "text mining") to describe the techniques of analyzing sources with computers.

In part of this Workshop you will learn about one program for distant reading: Voyant Tools. Two excellent ways to learn about these options are


Questions to consider, and learning activity


The learning activity for this week's workshop consists of three main parts.

Step 1: Learning about Voyant Tools and Distant Reading

Start by exploring Alyssa Anderson's blog on "Using Voyant Tools for Text Analysis." This essay introduces you to a Rice University project to read over 2,500 runaway slave ads from the nineteenth-century US! Of course, that's far too many ads to expect you to read, even though they're short. But what if there was a way for you to "read" these in a few minutes and actually have a chance to make some useful hypotheses?

Voyant Tools and other applications for distant reading allow just these kinds of possibilities. Anderson's essay not only tells you about the possibilities but it also allows you to play around with the huge file of runaway slave ads.

The following introduction by Stefan Sinclair will provide you with a brief introduction to Voyant Tools:




You should also budget about 6-10 minutes to watch Tom Lynch's introduction to using Voyant Tools. Lynch is an education professor at Pace University. His introduction focuses on "reading" Herman Melville's very long nineteenth-century novel, Moby Dick. (If you are not familiar with Moby Dick, you might look briefly at the the Wikipedia page on the novel, but this is not a requirement.)


 

Step 2: Creating Your Own Voyant Tools File

Now it is your turn to experiment with Voyant Tools! In this Part of the Workshop you will create an exportable visual output of a transcribed document from the list at the bottom of the page.

If you are experimenting with larger texts, make sure you only copy the main text of the article. In other words, be careful to avoid copying the bibliography, notes, or menu material in the left-hand margin. The reason is that this "tertiary" material will skew the results in Voyant. We don't want the program to "read" these extra data.

Step 3: Experiment with Voyant Tools

For this week's discussion, we'd like to hear about your experiences "reading" texts using Voyant. Tell us a bit about your results (especially its subject!). Spend some time exploring at least 2 of the various tools Voyant has to offer, and explain your results. Tell us what tools you are working with. Describe what you see, and explain what it might say about your text. How helpful was the tool you chose? How might Voyant might help you to pre-read a document you have not, yet encountered. Take a screen shot showing the results of the tool you are using and share it in your discussion post so your reader can better visualize your explanation.

Finally, comment on one another's experiences. What worked? What did you struggle with? What might you like to explore given more time?

Hint: You will have the option to work with Voyant again in Assignment Two, and throughout next semester, so take your time to experiment now if this appeals to you!


Feel free to experiment with Voyant to read future texts you encounter in the course, and share your thoughts in the discussions as we move through the course!

Source options to experiment with Voyant

Part Three: The Materiality of Texts

In a lot of our lessons we try to give you not simply the words of texts, but images that allow you to see how it was originally written. As you've already seen, in some cases that means seeing odd spellings, or different fonts that can be challenging for a contemporary reader. But we think it's important for you to see these differences because they help us think about the differences that exist between our worlds. 

This exercise urges you to think of our documents as not only a text, but also an object - that is, that the document is not just words/idea, but also has a material form. Here, we want you to examine the transcription of an early 18th-century treaty and a reproduction of the actual treaty and to compare the two. The transcription certainly adds value as it makes it easier to read. But what does looking at the original document add to your understanding of the treaty? What does the transcription take away from your understanding?

Focus on three specific questions: (i) what do the texts actually say (compare the two); (ii) what are the differences in the material nature of the two texts; and (iii) what do these differences mean for our interpretation of these 18th-century actions - that is, discuss how the materiality of the texts (18th-century vellum versus 21st-century plain text) can affect our interpretation. 

If you are unfamiliar with cursive writing, revisit the Supplementary Materials from our lesson on Reading Early Modern Texts for some guidance! 


Find the transcript here.

And links to the hi-res versions of the actual treaty document from the Library of Congress here.


Finally, comment on one another's experiences. What worked? What did you struggle with? What might you like to explore given more time?
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