Without any assigned readings for this week, and the ‘uncomference’ looming, I felt that my blog posting should reflect my journey towards picking a project proposal. This has been a difficult task for me, and I’ve often jumped from idea to idea, sometimes within days of changing. With a joint degree of history and geography, I knew my project would always in some way end up reflecting both of these interests. However, when studying further what a transnational perspective is, I felt the task could encompass anything and everything and still reflect both of my interests. For me, they fit together so easily, and a transnational perspective of history, has, in my eyes, exposed how entwined these two disciplines actually are.
To begin with, I know my progress reflected everything that Konrad Lawson, in his blog posting ‘Ideas to Sources or Sources from Ideas’, stated was standard for a student to do: “to begin with the big topic, the idea, or a potential argument and then they set off to find the sources”[1]. For me, my first idea of inspiration came from Geography. After completing a module in my second year of university which looked at Edward Said and Michel Foucault and how these ideas are still very apparent in today’s society, I knew I was interested in the themes of Power and ‘Us and Them’. Within the geography module, we had focused upon more modern day events such as the 9/11 attacks, the ‘War on Terror’ and Boko Harem. Said’s ideas, as seen within ‘Orientalism’, are very apparent in a lot of historical events and very much concern global connections. Often these global connections are a country pushing power over another so in that respect, thinking about the ideas of power relations, it was still difficult to pin point an event/place/time period that I wanted to start my research.
With an idea in my head that I wanted to look at global politics, I looked further into what I am also interested in. I knew that I was also fascinated with the media and the influence that the media holds. So often it is the media that reflects societal feelings or pushes society to think a certain way. However, this is not simply a modern day phenomenon that has occurred with our dependency on Social Media and being constantly connected via mobile phones. Tracking the rise of the daily newspapers during the nineteenth century, especially from a British stand point, highlights the influence and power that these papers held in regards to how society developed.
Both of these ideas made me want to research further into British colonial expansion, the knowledge produced from the exploration, and how this was portrayed to society back in Britain. However, I still only had a very broad idea of what my project would concern. Yet, as often happens, conducting further research, and with a historical geography lecture ringing in my head, I suddenly became interested in the idea of exploring. And more importantly, the importance of the map as a tool to exploration. The idea that Christopher Columbus only found the Americas because of an inaccurate map, or that the British Imperial map was also a tool to emphasise it’s world standing, attracted me enough to head to the library for some books.
From here, and maybe because I had just read Konrad’s posting, I, instead of focusing on reading around the subject of the map, began to look at the map’s themselves to see the changes over time, starting way back with Strabo’s Geography and looking towards Google Maps of today, to understand what the map reflects about society of the time and how countries became connected outside of the national boundaries.
Whether there is a correct approach in how to choose a research project or not, both approaches that were highlighted with Konrad’s article, have their positives and negatives. To some degree, I’ve tested them both, and still even I do not have the answer to how someone should go about picking a topic for their research.
[1] http://transnationalhistory.net/doing/2016/02/14/ideas-to-sources-or-ideas-from-sources/ (21/02/16)
You have my feelings, welcome to our world. We love the academic world. But once you have book or article out (it feels great but daunting), as the next day you look out of the window or stare into a mirror asking: what next?
Knowing a bit now about your interests and skills – use them, combine them. And you seem to have a love affair with maps (one that I share). I have a few suggestions.
Following your interest in geography and maps. This could be the: follow a source approach. Why not start reading maps (David Ramsey map collection) and try to see how the representation of Britain and the British Empire change in a time of increasing interconnectivity (transatlantic cable, shipping, globalisation)? A serial reading of maps roughly 1850/70-1900? Who is making these maps? Questions of audience in Britain and beyond may arise? As well as the selling and reading of maps? Or the circulation of cartographic knowledge? British mapmakers were not the only ones mapping territory, Empire, explorations. Did newspapers visualise the explorations of D. Livingstone and others? In other words: Were maps the medium for the transfer of spatial, geographical, explorational knowledge of empire and the world? (Reading Matthew Edney, Mapping the Empire; Kapil Raj, Relocating modern science)