ABSTRACT
Richard White presented on his Shaping the West project, an initiative based in the Spatial History Project at Stanford University. White’s team uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS), spatial analysis, and algorithms to connect data gathered from archival records to geographic locations. Shaping the West explores how railroads created spatial patterns and new kinds of experiences in the 19th century American West. The initiative looks beyond “Cartesian geography” to patterns of landholding, commerce, and communication.
The Spatial History Project at Stanford is part of a larger spatial turn in history. Most so-called “turns” emphasize their revolutionary intent. The Spatial History Project is not announcing the end of history or the extinction of the text or the narrative, it does, however, operate outside normal historical practice:
- All projects are collaborations involving historians, graduate students, undergraduates, geographers, GIS and visualization specialists, database architects, and computer scientists.
- Visualizations are key, and are more than just maps, charts, or pictures.
- Visualizations depend on digital history and the use of computers.
- The projects are open-ended: everything —both tools and data— becomes part of a scholarly commons to be added to, subtracted from, reworked and recombined.
- The project focuses primarily on space.
BIO
Richard White is the Margaret Byrne Professor of American History at Stanford University, and is a leading scholar in the history of the American West, Native American history, and environmental history. He received his B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his M.A. and PhD from the University of Washington. He has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Governor’s Award (1999), a MacArthur Fellowship (1997), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (1983-84); and has served on the board for several scholarly associations, acting as the President of both the Organization of American History and the Western Historical Association. He has written five books including Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America recently published by Norton, and is currently the principal investigator for the Shaping the West project, which explores the construction of space by transcontinental railroads in North America during the late nineteenth-century.
Richard White is the Margaret Byrne Professor of American History at Stanford University, and is a leading scholar in the history of the American West, Native American history, and environmental history. He received his B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his M.A. and PhD from the University of Washington. He has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Governor’s Award (1999), a MacArthur Fellowship (1997), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (1983-84); and has served on the board for several scholarly associations, acting as the President of both the Organization of American History and the Western Historical Association. He has written five books including Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America recently published by Norton, and is currently the principal investigator for the Shaping the West project, which explores the construction of space by transcontinental railroads in North America during the late nineteenth-century.