Presently Historical

In Wednesday’s Digital History class we talked about different ways to tell stories (see 50+ Ways to Tell a Story for examples) and eventually wound up in a discussion about linear and nonlinear storytelling, courtesy of Alan Liu’s article “When Was Linearity?: The Meaning of Graphics in the Digital Age.” The article made some interesting points, especially regarding the fluidity linear and nonlinear storytelling. In the end, the story itself dictates the mode of the telling; what you are trying to say influences the best way to say it.

The really interesting part came less from the articles, however, and more from an example Jeremy brought up. He directed us to an interesting scholarly article by David Staley of Heidelberg College called “Sequential Art and Historical Narrative: A Visual History of Germany.”* Instead of a traditional written essay, as you would find in any scholarly journal, Staley tells his story of the history of Volkswagon as a series of pictures with no words. Staley’s goal, as he says, is “to elevate visual sources from the background of historical representation to which historians have long confined them, and to arrange such images prominently in the foreground.” Why, he asks, do we only use images when communicating with the public, and not inside the profession?

It’s a question worthy of serious consideration I think. Is there something inherently wrong with using pictures, only pictures, to communicate rather than words? People made arguments for both sides, though as a whole we seemed more skeptical than accepting. One person claimed that pictures evoked more emotion than words, though that statement as argued seeing as words are just as capable of pulling at our heart strings. Many of the problems people seem to have stem from the lack of direction picture-essays offer for readers. In the broadest sense, are audiences unfamiliar with the subject matter even capable of understanding such visualizations? The Staley essay, completely lacking in context until the explanation at the end, certainly asks a lot from its readers. Not knowing much about cars and post-WWII Germany, it took me a while just to figure out what it was about, and it’s easier for each reader of picture articles to reach different conclusions than if they were reading. While work frequently has different consequences than author’s intended, visual-only pieces leave far more to the imagination and to personal experience when interpreting them.

So, are visual articles worth the trouble? If it were up to my class, it’s certainly a subject for debate. I think the value of these types of articles is limited, but not they are not without merit. Right now many historians are looking for new ways to interpret information, especially on the web. For the most part, however, I don’t think anyone has considered doing away with writing. It’s always nice when authors include images with their work to illustrate text, but many are restricted to using what is available, especially for those studying the thousands of years before the 20th century. I would certainly support anyone’s decision to write an article in pictures, it’s a fascinating way to go about sharing knowledge and encourages the use of images as sources in their own right, rather than simply illustrations. I would suggest creating captions for the images, not only so they can be properly cited, but also to give readers not as familiar with the material a better chance at following the argument. Done as such, public historians especially could get a lot of use out of this medium.

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*More of Staley’s work can be found in the archives of the Journal of the Association for History and Computing. All articles are listed by author’s name, and Staley is, of course, in the S section.

For some masochistic reason, I’m taking another fascinating class this summer: Readings in Early America. It’s a three-week crash course on recent historiography. I’m taking it for two reasons: first and most importantly, comp exams in January. Reason two? It’s early America, I am an early Americanist, and I haven’t taken an early America course in over a year. Plus, it’s with Lewis, and he’s completely ridiculous. I appear to be sidetracking, but I do have a point!

Anyway, this class is massive amounts of reading all at once, and one of tonight’s articles is truly something I’ve never encountered before. Claudio Saunt of the University of Georgia wrote a piece in the William and Mary Quarterly, the premier early America journal, called “Go West: Mapping Early American Historiography”* in which he literally mapping the “mental geography of the field” (746) from 1944, when the journal expanded from just Virginia history, through 2006. Not only did he categorize almost every single article by the author’s university and the subject matter, but he then divided them into pre-determined regions. He then created cartograms, “which display the geographic distribution of a given variable (people, automobiles, oak trees) by resizing defined units (countries, states, counties) in proportion to that variable” (750). In this case, regions with many articles written about or from them will appear larger on the map than regions with fewer articles. For example, the journal has published manymanymany more articles about the Northeast than California. Therefore, though California is geographically bigger than the Northeast, the Northeast appears larger on the map than California. It’s subjective rather than objective.

I won’t restate all his conclusions here, Saunt does that quite well himself and the article includes the cartograms he created. Actually seeing the way the field has changed over time and the patterns that emerge is really quite fascinating, though, and got me thinking. Could a project like this go digital though? In a way, Saunt’s project reminds me of projects like we looked at last week, Australia’s Mapping our Anzacs for example, where people can plot on a map where veterans of World War I came from. Instead of clusters of little markers, though, he literally changed the face of the continent using cartograms instead of the more traditional equal-area map.

I think, in the end, it’s word “traditional” that gets me. Almost everything we do with history in conjunction with the Internet and Web 2.0 is untraditional. I’d like to see a map that doesn’t use little flags, but rather one that might change size depending on what information people feed into it. In a way, as Saunt points out, it can more accurately reflect mental attitudes, a la “Saul Steinberg’s famous New Yorker  cover depicting a Manhattenite’s foreshortened view
of the continent” (750) because the reader can see, in this case for example, a person’s world view or how important different variables are in relation to others.

It seems to me that getting opinions and understanding where the public is coming from is part of the job of a public historian and/or museum professional, and today, much of that is done via the web. Using this kind of insight gathering can let museums know, for example, which exhibits or parts of the museum visitors like most in a simple, visual way. It would, of course, have be supplemented with a comment sheet or in-person interview, but the results might help the staff decide where to start if more than one area is up for reconsideration.

In terms of digital collections after a tragedy, I’m thinking CHNM’s 9-11 project and Hurricane Katrina websites, these kinds of maps would show where items came from or what part of the country they refer to, giving an idea of where people’s attention is focused. Since submission date is stored as well, one could look over time and find out what part of the country submitted the most at any given time, or if there were any patterns.

Admittedly, these might not be completely original data, and I’m sure something similar has been done. I’ve not seen many cartograms though (I didn’t even realize they had a name), and looking at distorted maps is far more interesting than looking at normal maps, at least in my opinion. If nothing else, it might be a fun option to explore, if only for break in monotony and the opportunity to show people how maps aren’t static truth, but merely subjective representations of the world around us.

*The original article can be accessed through the History Coopertive, which requires a subscription. If your institution has one, log into the library, then go here and access the WMQ, October 2008. AU students, that link should ask you to log into the system and will then take you to the main page. HC is particularly awesome, as it has the latest issues of journals, not just the ones from at least two years ago.