By: Georgina Rannard

Georgina Rannard — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 16:47:30 +0000

In our discussion, we talked the possibility of forming unconscious assumptions that by nature of using software or datasets, we are making historical analysis more ‘scientific’, or that readers/viewers will assume it is more scientific/accurate – an objective that most historians would hope that the discipline had moved away from.
This is perhaps an area where the ‘newness’ of the practice of visualisation seems very apparent. Can we develop capacities to critically create and analyse maps and images, alongside learning the skills to make them? Would/does the increased energy and resource being devoted to Digital Humanities involve this type of awareness? The authority of maps is a central theme in histories of cartography – do we need to be applying these critiques to our own practices today?

By: Berhard Strück

Berhard Strück — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 11:20:05 +0000

Reading some of these questions and comments I am wondering: Do we attribute a different epistemological value to images, maps and visualisations compared to word and narrative? Do we imagine maps and images being “purer” than text? If so, why? We try to build arguments, we teach our students to craft arguments in essays (with words)? Are maps and images not suitable to make a historian’s noble argument?

Comments on: Read Me First

By: Georgina Rannard

By: Berhard Strück