“The Good,
the Bad, and the Unknown: Visualization and History”
Prof. Cameron Blevins
History, Northeastern University
Friday, October 13, 2017
2 PM - 3 PM
Snell Library 421, Northeastern University
360 Huntington Ave
Boston MA, 02115
Abstract: How
does data visualization shed new light on the past? How does it obscure, flatten, or muddle our understanding of history? And what are the next frontiers for history and data visualization? In this talk, I will explain how visualization fits within established
historical practices of archival research and analysis, evidence and interpretation, and story-telling and narrative. In my own research project, Gossamer Network: The U.S. Post and State Power in the American West, I use maps, charts, and other types of visualizations
to build major new arguments about the history of the American state and its role in western expansion. My talk will offer a “behind the scenes” look at the project and its visualizations in order to engage in a frank appraisal of what worked, what didn’t,
and what remains to be done. This will help concretize a larger discussion about the role of data visualization within historical inquiry and the digital humanities more broadly.
About the speaker: Cameron
Blevins is an Assistant Professor of History at Northeastern University and is affiliated with the NULab for Maps, Texts, and Networks. He studies the nineteenth-century United States, the American West, and digital history. Cameron received his Ph.D. from
Stanford University, where he worked at the Spatial History Project and the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA). Before coming to Northeastern he was a postdoctoral fellow at Rutgers University’s Center for Historical Analysis and a Visiting Scholar
at the Rachel Carson for Environment and Society in Munich, Germany. His current research project, Gossamer Network: The U.S. Post and State Power in the American West, is a history of the nineteenth-century American state and its role in western expansion.
Some of his broader interests include geography, gender history, and information visualization.
About NUVis: The Northeastern
University Visualization Consortium (NUVis) is a new interdisciplinary cross-university initiative to support the university’s research
efforts in visualization and to connect faculty, researchers, and students across campus to foster a visualization community. Northeastern University’s interdisciplinary focus and structure is an ideal environment for such an interdisciplinary field of study,
and the goal of NUVis, funded through a collaboration between the College of Arts, Media and Design and the College of Computer and Information Science, is to continue to foster and grow this important area of research. NUVis sponsors talks and symposia including
a bi-weekly seminar, connects faculty and students through its online portal, provides resources to support visualization related research at the university through avenues including workshops and library sponsored open office hours, and hosts and organizes
community building events including hackathons and student research poster exhibitions.
