Latent Geographic Associations; Theorising Mapping in Journalistic and Fictional Accounts of 19th Century Bushfires
Our May seminar saw our over 20 members of our community gather to hear about “ Latent Geographic Associations; Theorising Mapping in Journalistic and Fictional Accounts of 19th Century Bushfires“. Details below.
Title: Latent Geographic Associations; Theorising Mapping in Journalistic and Fictional Accounts of 19th Century Bushfires
When: Thursday, 17 March 2022, 3:30 PM – 4:30 PM AEDT
Speaker: Fiannuala Morgan, The Australian National University
Format: 30 minute presentation & 30 minute open discussion via Zoom
Abstract: Recent advances in Natural Language Processing software as well as the accessibility of digital mapping software have dramatically expanded the possibilities for spatial analysis in the humanities. The analysis of place-names in large-scale corpora has been theorised as a ‘geographic imaginary’ and an ‘imagined geography’; cartographic models that respectively reflect geographies of cultural significance, and construct and mediate the readers’ understanding of space. From the outset, this approach attracted criticism for its reductionism and abstraction of the text. For literary studies, it is argued that maps as a reduced, approximate, and symbolic representation of reality work only in the domain of space and cannot approximate the complex representations of place found in literature. What remains absent from these debates, however, is consideration of how cartographic approaches enable scholars to advance historical spatial claims based on a presumed equivalency between textual worlds and reality. In this presentation, I draw attention to this phenomenon as a means of returning to some more fundamental questions in the spatial humanities. Namely, what do we seek to achieve when we map textual sources, and more importantly, what do we create? I draw on recent theoretical scholarship on Topic Modeling, a machine-learning technique that groups thematically related documents, to conceive of a computational cartographic approach as productive of a constellation of ‘latent geographic associations’ that ultimately facilitate diverse and non-singular interpretations. In this presentation I apply this framework to my current research mapping the locations of bushfires published in journalistic accounts and serialised fiction in 19th Century Australian newspapers as a means of exploring the affordances and limitations that digital mapping yields for historical and literary analysis.
About the speaker: Fiannuala Morgan is a PhD student at The Australian National University and a Librarian and Archivist at The National Library of Australia. Her current research involves the application of digital mapping software in the analysis of 19th century Australian fiction. Her recent publications include the Cambridge Element Aboriginal Writers and Popular Fiction: The Literature of Anita Heiss (2021) and the edited collection Black Thursday and Other Lost Australian Bushfire Stories (2021).
HADES Seminar Series: Humanities in the Digital Age
From the Humanities and Diverse eResearch Scholars group (HADES), this series brings together a wide range of interdisciplinary research at the intersection of Humanities and digital scholarship. We will hear from speakers on topics ranging from digital ethics and machine learning through to architecture and literary studies, but always with a focus on the crucial role that the Humanities play in helping to explain and shape complex human experiences. The series aims to challenge and extend understandings of digital research in the Humanities and present new and emerging work by scholars working across and between disciplines.
Seminars will usually be held monthly on the third Thursday of every month at 3:30pm.
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