Tag: Bodenhamer

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Blog #5

Throughout the entire process of creating this timeline for Elizabeth Grundy’s memoir, there have been multiple new perspectives that have been brought to my attention after using StoryMapJS. The whole process was extremely helpful in allowing me to gain a deeper understanding of this memoir, and after creating this timeline I have a much more clear idea of what Elizabeth Grundy’s life was like for her in each of the different places she traveled to throughout her memoir. “We see space as the platform for multiplicity, a realm where all perspectives are particular and dependent upon experiences unique to an individual, a community, or a period of time”(Bodenhamer, 14). Before looking at Grundy’s memoir geo-spatially, reading her memoir could get to be confusing at times where a bunch of different place names are being tossed around. Once I was familiar with all the place names in the memoir, I was able to connect most of the events that happened in this memoir with the location in which they occurred.

After doing this it was like I had gained an entirely new perspective about the memoir that I had never seen before, which is why I selected this quote from Bodenhamer. It shows that space opens up a whole slew of new insight once you start connecting places with other important pieces of the memoir such as people, events, or emotions. “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)”(Bodenhamer, 16). I found the link between space and time to be the most essential piece of bringing the memoir together.

Bodenhamer claims that each individual location that is mentioned in a story has it’s own embedded story behind it, so learning about these locations can help you to understand the writing more closely. In my case with Elizabeth Grundy’s memoir, gaining an understanding of each of the locations in the memoir, and being able to understand which events occurred there made the memoir much seem more smooth and fluent. “[Mapping] promises an alternate view of history and culture through dynamic representation of memory and place, a view that is visual and experiential, fusing qualitative and quantitative data within real and conceptual space”(Bodenhamer, 29). The biggest take away from this whole process for me was learning the different between visual and experiential representations. Mapping with StoryMapJS allows us to incorporate both of these into one efficient representation.

 

https://storymap.knightlab.com/edit/?id=grundy-memoir-caleb

 

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Blog #5

Blog #5

My experience with StoryMap JS was frustrating at times, to say the least, but once my map was completed there was a clear visual representation of the path traveled by Rosine and, her husband, Michel Tanneberger. I struggled the most with finding the towns on my basemap because of how many were present and how small the font was. Once I located both the towns that were included in my memoir, it was clear to me how far Rosine and Michel had to travel and it was evident how important space and time were in relation to their travels. As Bodenhamer mentions, “We are drawn to issues of meaning, and space offers a way to understand fundamentally how we order our world” (pg. 14).

Back in the 18th century, their main form of transportation was by foot. When I put both of these locations into the modern form of Google Maps it says that it is 286km, which is 177.712 miles. Though the memoir doesn’t reveal where or when Rosine stopped along her journey, I’m sure that the places she chose were influential to her overall experience of traveling to a foreign land. I believe that the route of travel taken by the Tanneberger’s most accurately represents change, historical, in a spatial way. Bodenhamer explains this in the book by saying, “Spaces are not simply the setting for historical action but are a significant product determinant of change. They are not passive settings but the medium for the development of culture” (pg. 16).

I believe that mapping out historical events can create a visualization that is appealing both spatially and contextually. It usefully links both history and geography to create a story through time. After creating my own Story Map for this memoir and reading the passage from Bodenhamer, I realized how important this was to the project. It brought all of our information together to create a visual story.

Rosine Tanneberger’s memoir was very short, so I was limited with choice on which points to plot. I decided to plot her birthplace and where she traveled to. In addition to that, I plotted points in those towns (Mainly Mankendorf) when she expressed a feeling, and then described why.  Bodenhamer justified this point in his passage as, “the spaces of interest to the humanities also could be personal- emotional space or the body in space- and even metaphorical or fictional…” (pg. 21). Now that I have more experience working with maps and the Story Map JS website, I’m feeling more confident in my abilities to understand the visual and spatial representation that I created through this project with my memoir.

[iframe src=”https://uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/e4b672c558d1e2012a20b97975d43abf/olivia-smith-bethlehem-memoirs/index.html” frameborder=”0″ width=”100%” height=”800″][/iframe]

 

 

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Blog #5

Blog #5

The geo-spatial data helped us make sense of the history of our authors because it gave us a visualization we have not yet seen involving our memoir. We have used a timeline as a visual to allow us to understand what Elizabeth Grundy did over time, but a geo-spatial visual has allowed us to engage so much more into her life . The spatial element is a component of our memoirs that allows us to understand how Elizabeth Grundy traveled throughout her life. Bodenhamer described the spatial element very well as a “complex relativistic view of space [that] has reinvigorated geography”(14). He not only mentions that it is a view of space, but also that it plays an important role in geography. While transcribing and editing Grundy’s memoir, I never actually considered where this was all happening. I knew it took place in Northern England, but I could not connect the place names in my head; creating this story map allowed me to make those connections. Grundy traveled a lot throughout Northern England, but her stops were all relatively close. She was born in Chowbent, Lancashire, made a stop in Dukinfield, Cheshire, and then made three stops in Western Yorkshire (Baildon, Fulneck, and Huddersfield). I liked how in his article, Bodenhamer challenged humanists saying that they disregard geography: “[Geographic Information Systems] demands the use of spatial questions, whereas most humanists think rarely about geographical space”(24). The fact that humanists can do all this work and not take into account the locations where everything happens is mind-boggling. There are so many questions that can be thought up when considering the geography of a memoir: why is this space important?; is it well connected?; is it urban or rural? Questions like these can help readers understand the complexities of the history of a memoir. By simply finding the locations on a map, these questions can be answered. In Grundy’s memoir, her stops are all pretty well connected, not too far away, and they are a bit more on the rural side. From this information, I can deduce that this space is important because Grundy never wanted to move too far away from her children. She grew up with very strict parents and wanted to make sure that her kids never felt the same as she did throughout her whole life. This shows when she even went to visit her daughter in Huddersfield. Mapping is a great way to assign spatial-data to a memoir: “It aids but does not replace expert narrative”(Bodenhamer, 28).

 

https://storymap.knightlab.com/edit/?id=tracing-the-life-of-elizabeth-grundy

[iframe src=”https://uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/41d06efc9ebea53a9c43daa6f877181e/tracing-the-life-of-elizabeth-grundy/index.html” frameborder=”0″ width=”100%” height=”800″][/iframe]

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Blog Post #5

[https://uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/8c9a5b58570d3c8aeddcf296a1ec4c24/graning-tippet/index.html]

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)