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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)

 

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Blog #5

Blog #5: Visualization

A map is a diagram of collection of data showing the spatial distribution of something and the relative positions of its components. There is a tremendous amount of data embedded into maps that can be accessed by analyzing them.  As mentioned in the Bodenhamer reading, “we are drawn to issues of meaning, and space offers a way to understand fundamentally how we order our world to work” (Bodenhamer 14). Where a particular feature on a map is positioned matters. Its position and relationship to other features demonstrates what it important. I was able to utilize the spatial distance between points on the map to gain more information.

The map I created provided a spatial representation of a narrative because it was telling the story of one particular person. Specifically mapping Harriet Lees’ memoir has demonstrated how Harriet Lees spent the majority of her life and how she made her journey to Leamington in attempt to improve her health. Furthermore, through the Moravian Lives website and creating my map, I was able to see where other Moravians, specifically women, at the time lived. I was able to get a better understanding about Harriet Lees because I discovered what Moravian women at the time did and what their purpose in the church was. Furthermore, I was able to see how important historical events that occurred in Great Britain during the course of Harriet Lees’ life, affected where Moravians, specifically Harriet Lees lived. Even though London was the central hub for Moravians in the past, during 1811-1842 (the years Harriet Lees was alive for) the greatest number of Moravian women, whose information was in the archives, lived in Bristol and not London. I realized that this was because Bristol was a huge port on the slave trade, so there was a booming economy there. Bristol is much closer to where Harriet Lees lived, so it is very possible that she interacted with the members of the Congregation in Bristol. This directly relates to Bodenhamer’s point that “spaces are not simply the setting for historical action but are a significant product and determinant of change” (Bodenhamer 16). Because of events occurring at the time, the central location for Moravians changed because they followed the thriving economy. Mapping Harriet Lees’ life taught me more about the life of a Moravian woman at the time. The places I mapped were Woodford cum Membris, The Moravian Church in Leominster, The Moravian Church in Bristol, female Moravians in Bristol during Harriet Lees’ life, Moravian women who were in Leominster at some point during Harriet Lees’ life, and The Leamington Spa in Leamington. The specific locations plotted on the map proved my past opinion that religion was extremely important to Harriet Lees as the majority of the places plotted were churches. The spatial difference between Leominster and Woodford Cum Membris reflects not only a physical movement, but represents the change in her religion.  I was also able to gain a better understanding of events and situations that Harriet Lees may have faced throughout her life. As mentioned in the Bodenhamer reading, “human activity is about space and time” and creating the map on Storymap.js “provided a way to manage, relate, and query events, as well as to visualize them” (Bodenhamer 22). Through the map, I was able to track Harriet Lees’ activity and understand more about her.

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