Mapping Family Value(s)

Thrilling discovery! There is an open, searchable map for the Domesday Book: http://domesdaymap.co.uk

Of course, this bodes well for my large-scale project, because the Domesday site also incorporates IMAGES OF THE ENTIRE TEXT-- with English annotations to the side.  I'm unspeakably excited about finding this source (which is free, miraculously).

On a professional level, the Domesday Map contextualizes the smaller and larger steps of my own mapping project (in case you missed it)
On a more personal level, the site helps me imagine my family history.
My first documented ancestor is Ralph de la Pommerai, or Pomeroy.  He is recorded in the Domesday Book as lord of Berry [of] Pomeroy, whose castle is pictured right. I've spent countless hours wondering what life might have been like here, even in its original structure, but had very little material with which to work.

Despite having a genealogical book of my father's family, I've never known as much about my 11th century ancestor as I would like (indeed, I'm sure I never will).  I could have known more though, had I bothered to look at the Domesday Book myself:

from domesdaymap.co.uk

And although the wikipedia article is similarly helpful, it of course isn't anything like the entry of Berry Pomeroy on the Domesday Map site: 

domesdaymap.co.uk

It's really fascinating for me to have Ralph Pomeroy's holdings-- human, animal, and land-- seen in this way.  The Berry had 45 villagers, 17 smallholders, and 16 slaves.  Land for 25 ploughlands was worked by 4 lord's teams and 17 men's teams; although a seemingly large population, it paid relatively low tax.  How had Ralph managed that? What was his relationship like with William the Conqueror, who landed him in the first place?  With 560 sheep, how often did he eat mutton?

domesdaymap.co.uk

Clicking on him brought me to a map of all sites associated with his name (even if not the same person, as the disclaimer notes).  I found that his holdings extended beyond that one (now purportedly haunted) castle ruins that I've known about for so long. Not surprisingly, all 136 locations affiliated with Ralph Pomeroy are in Devon.

As excited as I am to find personal, familial fulfillment in this project, I'm perhaps equally enthused by its implications for mapping the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles.  Who knows what someone else might find? What personal or academic impact might my project, even in its smallest version, have on someone else?

And this is exactly my purpose, as I've written about in earlier posts.  There is a problem with medievalists, their sources, their audiences, and accessibility.  Amazingly, this map-- a form perhaps first employed to mark boundaries-- is now breaking them down.

Until soon, fellow revolutionaries.
(speaking of ironic use of "revolutionaries"-- has anyone read the article about the Pope's speech in Cuba's Revolutionary Square?)

On thingness and stories

News Headline and corresponding mini-article, via iPhone, via Twitter, via Gawker:

Encyclopaedia Britannica Dies Under Its Own Massive, Printed Weight

Alas, yet another sign that yet another era is ending. The New York Times is reporting that after 244 years, the Encyclopaedia Britannica is going out of print. While it's easy to imagine that we'll survive just fine without it—in this age of Wiki everything—we also know that life will never be the same. Now knowledge-starved children will be tasked with googling something to learn about it rather than turning to those beautiful, if obscenely heavy, bound volumes. (That gold lettering! The randomness of topics allowed by alphabetical entries!) Nevertheless, all is not lost. We will still have online access to the rock solid information once contained in the encyclopedias. Though until they find a way to recreate the experience of holding the weighty tome in one's hand and inhaling the almost ancient smell of the Encyclopaedia Britannica through your electronic device, we can still rightly sulk about the death of these classic books.

And here's an excerpt from another article on the encyclopedia's crash, written by a former employee of Britannica.com for Inside Higher Ed:

[Explains, somewhat long-windedly, the reason for the failure]

Those of us who work in higher ed will need to make many transitions to stay relevant in an increasingly global and digital economy. We will have good ideas about how to evolve traditional higher education away from the bundled, place-based, discipline centric institutions that we ourselves were educated in, have spent our lives working for, and that we love. Our success in evolving our institutions, however, will not be determined solely by our ideas for change - but instead by our abilities to execute on these ideas. Will we have the wisdom and skills necessary to evolve our institutions in a global, digital economy?

The rest of the article here.

Although I didn't love the article, I could relate immediately to its points.  At the cartography workshop hosted by GlobalWork(s) Lab, we discussed the frustrations of having ideas about mapping projects but lacking funding, access, and programming help. Many of us were trying to bring the humanities into digital media but felt like we needed a degree in computer science.  Our interests are interdisciplinary, but are skills are not. Even more attendees-- especially faculty-- brought up issues of funding, availability of faculty or student support, pressures of tenure, whether or not a project could count as a publication, and what happens if a project fails.  This rather promising conversation came at the end of the day, so very few answers were put forward, but I was relieved to know that I was not alone as someone flailing about and failing to cross borders between fields.

Not mentioned in the workshop, but something I find rather fascinating, is the exhibit of Salman Rushdie's Archive (ended in 2010).
From the curator:

A World Mapped by Stories showcases Rushdie’s belief that reality and the world leave a lot to the imagination, committing the vigilant writer to the task of mapping. For Rushdie this involves a global mindset, creativity with a strong historical sense, the integrity to defend multiple worldviews, and the courage to “point at frauds.” Mapping captures Rushdie’s philosophy of engagement with a storied world, the writer’s creative role in shaping it, and the importance of guarding the freedom to do so. Borrowed from Rushdie’s account of his travels with writer Bruce Chatwin, the title of the exhibition offers a simple but profound message: stories are powerful because we know the world through them. Rushdie’s stories reinvent a world made cynical by injustice and suffering.

Article here.

Elaine Justice quoted Richart E Luce in her publication about the exhibit:  
"The Rushdie archive signifies two major trends of our time: the globalization of arts and letters, and the digital world in which contemporary writers and artists, such as Mr. Rushdie, are now composing their masterpieces."
Article here.

Yet through the constant talk of future digitalization and present globalization, a voice speaks up for the artifacts of the past. Physical objects matter, perhaps now more than ever.

In July of 2011, Neil MacGregor (author of A History of the World in 100 Objects and Director of the British Museum, nbd) spoke at TED about a 2600 year-old, cuneiform-inscribed cylinder as "a powerful symbol of religious tolerance and multiculturalism." I would have included words like "site" and "memories" in the little blurb, but oh well.  I highly recommend watching the talk:
http://www.ted.com/talks/neil_macgregor_2600_years_of_history_in_one_object.html

It's a rather large, heavy object.  Daunting and illegible to the vast, vast majority of us, it hosts stories spanning over two and a half millennia; its meaning has been made and remade through its inscription and provenance. As an object, as a thing, the cylinder tells a story of civilization.  Its voice rings out, perhaps ironically, via my laptop, via google search, via the website of TED--short for Technology, Entertainment, Design.

Meet my mapping project

Old English chronicles only pretend to care about time; they're really more invested in space. 

I'm currently trying to develop a database and platform with which I can map out the content-- the actual narratives-- of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. For my Duke class, I will start by mapping invasion sites in the Peterborough Chronicle, one version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle(s).

Google Map and Google Earth allow people to add data to a location (see Wallace's map).  The problem with these platforms is that there's no way for the data to interact.  When I make a map of all the invasion sites mentioned in the Peterborough Chronicle, the information that pops up for each place will be isolated.  There isn't  anything else for me to do with it, like search for "Danes" or "heathens" or "William."

I'm hoping to develop a way to get the text of each entry to interact-- an undertaking which has proven quite difficult to begin.  Once I have time to grow the project and incorporate all sites mentioned in the Peterborough Chronicle, having the right platform and database will allow users to search for things like invasions, fires, deaths or births of kings, miracles, and church construction.  It might also be able to limit searches based on areas or time frames.

From there, if I could get a team of scholars (and a grant) to incorporate each version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, we could see some differences among them more easiy, than say, Thorpe's translation:

Thorough though it is, I find this very hard to follow.  Scholars of the chronicles need new ways to rethink these texts, on their own terms and in communion with each other.

Big picture, my project aims to locate the stories of these histories in a virtual space that will help readers reimagine the past.  

But here's what else I think it could do:

bring chronicles back to the classroom

employ digital media for medieval interests other than paleography and digital collections

reinvigorate the scholarly discussion of chronicles, which confront issues of empire, borderlands, nation-building, kinghsip,warfare, changes in the English language, the study of pre-printing book creation, materiality, and paleography
help us reimagine time as space

I'm excited to attend "Cartography and Creativity in the Age of Global Empires," hosted by Duke's BorderWork(s) Humanities Lab.  Here's the description:

Please join us for this inter-disciplinary workshop, which brings into conversation historians, literary critics, artists, geographers, and the digital and spatial humanities to explore the nexus of mapping, art, and global empire. Our day-long discussion will investigate the consequences of treating maps as “image texts” and also the manner in which modern mapping practices have been engaged by artists across a broad range of image media for understanding the acts of demarcation that have parceled the world into sovereign bounded communities as well as contemporary challenges to these borders, boundaries, and lines of control.

And here's the website: http://sites.duke.edu/borderworks/borderworks-events/workshop/

Hopefully I'll have more to report back soon.  In the meantime (and even after), I'd love to know what you think.

Miscellany and Money

It has been too, too long since my last post.  Some updates:
I'm still mapping
My sisters, husband, brothers-in-law, and I surprised my dad for his 70th birthday in Austin thanks to the mad coordinating skills of my stepmom, Heather

For those of you interested in the intersections between digital and print worlds, here is a link about the "listsicle" of Thomas Nashe, who wrote in the late sixteenth-century on "Eight Kindes of Drunkennes" Listsicle Article

For those curious about how exercise can "change your DNA"-- can you smell the spin?-- check out this little ditty about what we already know: working out is the best thing ever, and people who don't do it are lame. Feeling guilty? You should!


[skip transition] I've noticed-- in news and in recent articles floating about my laptop-- an increased curiosity in changing perceptions of wealth.  For instance, Mitt Romney seems rather unapologetic about his gazillions, and his wife doesn't consider herself wealthy at all (see abc article here). 

Mitt and Ann Romney, image from The Telegraph
ARE THOSE PEARLS REAL?

But according to Michael Dean Crews, The US would not be the first nation to pull extraordinary wealth from the flames of socio-religious condemnation.  In his master's thesis, he examines "the various ways that the perception of bankers and banking in Florence changed from the 13th to the 15th century" within "three categories, scholastic attitude, law, and public image, and utilizes a socio-intellectual style of historical inquiry."  
He continues:

Dante in Florence

"The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that the positive acceptance of banking from a formerly profane vocation was due to a more advanced understanding of industry and economics, a more relativistic interpretation of theological and juridical sources, and an aggressive campaign by the humanists to redefine moral values and to reshape the Florentine culture and urban landscape in order to bring esteem and power to the elite bankers. " The rest of the article is here.

Sounds familiar, no?  Allow me to be clear-- I'm passing no judgment on Romney or the Florentine bankers; I'm only drawing a parallel.  

Yet banking isn't the only arena to benefit from the reworking of wealth's righteousness.  In 2007, John R. Black published an article called "Tradition and Transformation in the Cult of St. Guthlac in Early Medieval England" in The Heroic Age: A Journal of Early Medieval Northwestern Europe.  In it he finds that: "[a]nalysis of the variations introduced into the hagiographic corpus, both textual and iconographic, for a saint’s cult over the course of the medieval era demonstrates the vitality of that corpus, reveals the cultural significance of the variations introduced, and offers insights into (re)conceptualizations of sainthood." 

St Guthlac and Demons, Guthlac Roll (13th century)

Fascinating? Yes. Relevant to this post? Almost.  

Here's the good part: "Such analysis elucidates, for example, the ‘evolution’ of St. Guthlac from ascetic solitary to promoter and defender of a wealthy religious establishment." Article here.

I wonder, then, if the Republican voters, and later, the larger body of American voters, will reorder the narrative of Romney's wealth (if they need to).  What other forms might his money-making take in the public eye?

Until soon, patient readers!