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Visualization

In today’s society space is everywhere. Bodenhamer says, “Here, contemporary notions of space are myriad; what once was a reference primarily to geographical space, with its longstanding categories of landscape and place, is now modified by class, capital, gender, and race, among other concepts, as an intellectual framework for understanding power and society in times near and distant”(14). The idea of space is no longer solely related to an actual physical space between two objects or locations, instead, it is also used as any difference between objects. Look at today’s political climate in America, we have mostly separate the country into two categories Republican or Democrat and we even assign states to be Republican or Democratic. Bodenhamer explains that when looking at boarders, “they are not passive settings but the medium for the development of culture” (16). This is a more generic view of space within America but these histories or categories that are seen as differences can vary from person to person or even country to country.

When viewing a map you are usually looking at locations, but there is always subconscious history attached to each location. For example, when you look at a globe and you see the United States, you might think of the revolutionary war or you might even think of American Football. I am from New Jersey so when I see New Jersey on a map, I instantly think of the summers I have spent on the beach with my friends and family. These personal experiences in New Jersey help me create a separation between New Jersey and other states. Bodenhamer explains, “We are drawn to issues of meaning, and space offers a way to understand fundamentally how we order our world” (14). So if a map is a way of demonstrating space between locations it is also a way of creating space between history and experiences and this combination allows someone to “understand fundamentally how we order our world.” (14)

I personally found it only partially helpful to map my memoir. I believe that this is the outcome of having a memoir that focused only on one outcome. Samuel Tippett’s ultimate goal is to be forgiven of his sins in the eyes of the lord. This singular goal makes for very similar experiences and levels of importance between locations like Bitton, Bristol, Kingswood, etc. Every place that Tippett visits is related towards his overarching goal of dedicating his life to Jesus. I did however find it very helpful to map out Tippet’s relationships. Tippet is constantly mentioning individuals that impacted his religious path and separating them by locations makes it easier to keep track of who he met where.

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After creating a timeline as well as mapping the memoir, it tells my group members and a lot about our memoir as I’m sure other students would agree as well. As I described in Blog Post #4, creating the timeline helped me better analyze the story and have all of the information organized in a timely fashion by using chronological order. The creation of the timeline also helped significantly in creating my story map. I found myself frequently referring back to our timeline for reference.

More importantly, the story map tied everything together for me.” We are drawn to issues of meaning, and space offers a way to understand fundamentally how we order out world.” (Bodenhamer 14) Everything in this class is completely new to me on analyzing a memoir. In the past, I would normally read and maybe reread a second time in order to point out key words and understand. With the process of tagging, transcribing, creating a timeline, and lastly a story map I truly have broken down the whole memoir. With the story map, by physically looking on a map I understood where Samuel Tippet had traveled during his lifetime and where the places he went to exactly where. Unlike many other memoirs other students had, he had not traveled much. This made the story map process a bit easier, because I was able to use one map to plot all of my points besides the city of London which was cut off a bit. Some students in class had characters in their memories that traveled all throughout Europe and even globally. Before reading Samuel Tippet’s memoir, I had no idea where Bristol or Kingswood were. Tippet traveled around England, but most of his places that he visited were relatively close to each other besides London! Some events were his birth, Hanham Mount (spiritual realization), and Bristol. Bristol is also where he pledged allegiance to God.

Personally, I found it very interesting to learn about because two summers ago I attended the London School of Economics and fell in love with London. It was my first time there, and I will definitely be back. Unfortunately, I had not gotten to see or experience the countryside of England. I also thought it was cool that Professor Faull was born here as well as she had great background info on this area!

While creating the story map, I used media from Google Images as well as some of our media that we used in our timeline. “Spaces are not simply the setting for historical action but are a significant product and determinant of change.” (Bodenhamer 16) The timeline helped me describe some of the events at each place on our map and make it a story. Another part that helped me was creating the Google Fusion table about what was used most in our memoir which was probably people and place rather than emotion. What I want our story to tell is that throughout Samuel Tippet’s life he visited a few places. However, through these series of events especially the Parish of Bitton. Tippet realizes how important God and religion are to him here. He later devotes his life to God and realizes that his prior mistakes made can be amended and forgiven through religion. He becomes very spiritual throughout his lifetime. Mapping memoirs ties all of our prior steps together and creates a story through small descriptions, an exact location placed on a map as well as photographs to depict the place. A quote that I really liked from the reading was “In practice, critics claimed, evidence about the world depends upon the perspective of the observer, a distinction that GIS obscures.” (Bodenhamer 19)

 

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With the whole process of this timeline for Esther Latrobe there has been many revelations on things that came up during the making of the timeline. As Bodenhamer explains it in his article, ” we recognize our representations of space as value laden guides  to the world as we perceive it, and we understand how they exist in constant tension with other representations from different places, at different times, and even at the same time.”(14) This whole timeline lets us perceive the journey one takes in ones own life. However, this timeline has its own limits in how one can convey the journey of someones life with limited amount of information that was given in our memoir for Esther Latrobe. “Each artifact (memoir, timeline and etc)  would constitute a separate record anchored in time and space, thus allowing us to keep them in a relationship, and each layer would contain the unique view overtime of an individual or a social unit.” (27)

With spatial thinking includes processes that support exploration and understanding. Also, it help us visualizes relations, imagines transformations from one scale to another, creates a new viewing perspective on what we are able to see, and helps us remember images in places and spaces. Spatial thinking also allows us to externalize these ideas by creating representations such as a map timelines for us to understand the journey of story.

In the memoir that my group worked one there were not many dates on the life of Esther Latrobe. It was mostly about the sicknesses she faced during her life, how she always prayed for god for forgiveness and etc. There was a comment from one of my group members that got us thinking how the traveling information is not represented in the timeline or in the memoir. It does tells us where she goes, but it does explain how long it took to get there, the method she got there and her experiences she had to face when journeying to a place. Latrobe journey consisted of her being born in Bristol, England in 1802 then moving Tytherton, England in 1820. Later on moving to Gracehill, Ireland to become a teacher and finally settling in Ayr, Scotland where she died in peace.  This journey she had must have been a long one for her because in the age of existence she did not the luxury that many humans have now in getting to one place to another.

Overall, the experience of transcribing the memoir of Esther Latrobe was an experience of a life time. “All spaces contain embedded stories on what has happened there. These stories are both individual and collective, and each of them link geography (space) and history (time).” (16)

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Elizabeth Grundy traveled throughout Northern England during her lifetime. When transcribing the memoir, I was able to read all of the places she visited, but did not realize the extent at which her and her son traveled. By creating a map of these specific places, I was able to match places with important events and determine which towns were important in her life. I had never really thought about which events took place where and the fact that not all of the important parts of her life took place in one town. They were scattered throughout Northern England but specifically close to Lancashire and Yorkshire. When reading the transcribed memoir, I was unaware that Elizabeth Grundy moved around as often as she did.

 

In a more general sense, mapping can be used to link together different pieces of history. “But what we can do is inform the present more fully with the artifacts of social memory, the evidence of recall from various times and various perspectives,” (Bodenhamer 26). Sometimes, historians have information about a specific event and where it took place but are unsure about the timing. If they find another event that is related to the first, and it occurred in a place nearby, they can link these two events together and estimate a date as to when it occurred. They can also link together different towns across the globe if they plot the linked events. “We select and interpret these cultural artifacts to frame our understanding of the past and present,” (Bodenhamer 25). Historians are able to come up with lists of important events that occurred in several different places and realize how complex each event was and the effort that was involved in each one. “We must direct technology if it is to help us open the past to the multiple perspectives and contingencies we know existed in the past,” (Bodenhamer 26). Mapping allows us to explore these perspectives and allows historians to draw conclusions that they are unsure of.

 

Some important story points in my map that I included were the places where she was born and passed away. I added the town in which she started her School for Girls because this was an important point in her memoir. I also added some background knowledge about her son and his wife that may be missed when reading the memoir because it is mentioned briefly. The reason I added a slide for this was because Grundy’s son was very important to her and this was something important from his life. I also added a slide of a town that related back to her parents and life when she was younger. It provided readers with a sense of how religion became such a large part of her life. Readers are able to gain a sense of how each of these English towns influenced Elizabeth Grundy and her family throughout her life.

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