Session presented by Edward L. Ayers, Dean of Grad School of Arts and Sciences, Univ. of Virginia and
William G. Thomas, II, Professor of Humanities, Dept. of History, Univ. of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Earnestine Harrison attended this session with me.
Rating: Excellent.
This session was superior to the opening Keynote—and could have been a Keynote that would have been very informative.
How can we show history? Here is one of the best representations according to many:
http://www.napoleonic-literature.com/1812/1812.htm
It may be like a weather map. Climate is what we expect--weather is what we get--Mark Twain
How do we show the weather?
History lets us use time to “retrodict” why things happened. Just like the scientific data after a hurricane, history can help explain other things. History helps us to map time. We can map space--but we have not been so good at mapping time. These are ideas, prototypes, wire-frames of how to map time and space.
History may be a shattered mirror of time. Can we put the mirror back together and understand individual, family, and community experiences?
The Emancipation Project and the Southern History Database (Southern Mosaic) Team Assignments are examples of these displays of data:
http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/EP2/matrix.html
http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/SHD/assignments.html
The goal is to add visuals and graphics to throw things off-balance--to create more creative tension--to mix things up.
How do we create a four dimensional historical atlas?
Railroads "annihilated space and time" in the 1800s--people moved faster than they could view or perceive--things moved faster.
We have a networked information system that has the potential of integrating representations—railroads can be related to migration of slaves, migration of the blues, movement of labor, purchase of slave labor by railroads, etc.
http://railroads.unl.edu/
