In the past 15 years, the “spatial turn” in the social science and the humanities has drawn theoretical perspectives and analytical techniques previously contained within the discipline of geography into a number of disciplines: Anthropology, English, History, Political Science, and Sociology, just to name a few. The spatial turn is complemented by the parallel rise of digital technologies and representations within the social sciences and humanities. The use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) throughout the social sciences is one important dimension of the emerging inter-disciplinary scholarship known colloquially as the “Digital Humanities.” GIS technologies and analytical methods have proved fruitful for researchers across the social sciences and humanities, but the emerging field of Historical GIS provides perhaps the most promising of all. The promise of Historical GIS is truly interdisciplinary historical analysis, as it brings together experts in fields with complementary needs. “Geography is the study of spatial differentiation, history the study of temporal differentiation. Historical GIS provides the tools to combine them and to study patterns of change of space and time” (Knowles 2002, xii). Outside of the academy, the ability to work with and analyze spatial information is increasingly sought in a variety of professional fields. Geographic visualization and analysis techniques are utilized by companies and organizations to discover important trends in their data, and to identify new areas of opportunity. In this course, you complete a semester project/paper that demonstrates your competence in, if not mastery of, historical and humanities GIS techniques.
