Visualizing a Spatial Archive: GIS, Digital Humanities, and Relational Space

Geography matters! In any reading of literature or history, paper or digital, our imaginations are often invoked through a spatial sense. In a country where the importance of dinnseanchas, or “place lore,” remains a significant contemporary component, a reading of place regularly features across the multiple strands of Irish Studies.[1] From Heaney’s poetry to the novels of Sebastian Barry, place and a sense of place are ever-present in how stories and literary ideas are presented, received, and interpreted.[2] History too, in its archives and methods of study, has always happened somewhere and in that sense has always been explicitly emplaced. Given the broad theme of this issue—querying whether Digital Humanities offers better ways of realizing traditional Humanities goals or has the capacity to change understandings of Humanities goals altogether—it is useful to consider this question empirically against the increase in new digital forms of spatial information.