I’m thinking through the relationship between the US Consular Service and the US Customs Service, as well as the true nature of the US-Canadian border in the late nineteenth century. As an initial exercise, I made a quick map of US Customs posts in 1872, based on the US Register. As you can see, they’re certainly thick on the ground, especially in the northeast. Some of that may have something to do with the fact that James G. Blaine of Maine was the speaker of the House at the time and already in possession of a significant network of people who needed patronage appointments, but it also speaks to the realities of the coastline and the importance of tariffs to the federal government. I look forward to expanding the maps across time and across other agencies.
Category: Visualizations
Digital Humanities at UVM
My colleague Melanie Gustafson and I presented some of our work as part of the series of events at UVM organized by our Humanities Center Collaborative Faculty Fellowship Group on the Digital Humanities. Thanks to all who attended!
I showed some of the maps and visualizations I have made as part of my research on the Consular Service. (You can see them as part of my 2015 SHAFR presentation.)
Prof. Gustafson and I both stressed the time commitment involved in digital humanities projects, the need to work collaboratively to bring all the essential skills to the table, and the intellectual work of categorization and organization. We agreed that, not only do digital humanities exhibits/projects need to be considered as part of departmental promotion and tenure guidelines, but properly curated datasets made available to the public should be counted as well.