Preliminary Programme

Most studies of the Atlantic World are curiously devoid of space, even though the construct of such a world is clearly spatial. The same is true of the study of religion. Sacred spaces abound, but, as in the case of Atlantic World studies, emphasis is on ideas and culture with scant consideration given to the geographical environment in which developments occurred or to the explicitly spatial themes embedded in these subjects. A three-year project of the Virtual Center for Humanities GIS, a collaboration among Florida State University, West Virginia University, and Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis, is using religion as a way to understand the spatiality of the Atlantic World in its formative period during the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. With the help of an interdisciplinary team of Atlantic World specialists, the project is re-examining major themes and developing a spatial perspective on the Atlantic World paradigm, using religion as a test case. This presentation will explore what it means to look at this theme spatially as well as outline the questions and approaches used by the project. (Show less)

This paper surveys how concepts of place and space currently are invoked in historical analyses of religion in the Atlantic world and estimates the strengths and weaknesses of approaches grounded in such concepts. It examines the relational emphases privileged in Atlantic world studies (i.e., Europe, Africa, and the Americas in their mutually constitutive roles) and assesses how local studies (e.g. a port, village, island, etc.) can be usefully framed within that paradigm. It also indicates where local studies require perspectives that do not comport well with prevailing paradigms of geographically larger Atlantic world investigations and comments on how some investigation of the Atlantic world invites attention to extra-Atlantic history and culture. It concludes with observations about how Atlantic world studies instance some of the promise of a spatial humanities and indicates where technological and conceptual advances are necessary in order to advance the analytical and interpretative agenda of a spatial humanities. (Show less)

The spatial turn in the humanities has been heavily premised on the use of GIS and geospatial technologies in project-based applications. This focus on method and a technology-led adoption of GIS has arguably been at the loss of a deeper ontological and epistemological discussion of the impacts arising from the use of a digital spatial science in the world of the humanities. It is no surprise that GIS has come to the humanities after having made much earlier and successful inroads into the sciences and social sciences not least because its algorithmic and positivist scientific architecture would initially appear to be at odds with the predominantly text-based and qualitative world of the humanities. Yet the humanities, far from being the recipients of a colonizing technology, have the potential to assimilate, shape and refashion the technology to suit the somewhat unique characteristics of its own methodological traditions. This paper explores the assumptions inherent in the adoption of a spatial scientific methodology and proposes ways in which the broader science of geographic information may be appropriately harnessed in the spatial humanities. (Show less)