SPATIAL HISTORY I & II (HIST401)

Department of History, Stanford University

2020

What can digital mapping and spatial analysis bring to history? How have historians written spatial history in the past? How do scholars in other disciplines deal with space and what can we learn from them? The course provides students with conceptual and technical skills in spatial history. As part of the exercise to think spatially about the past, students will receive training in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and develop their own spatial history projects. There are no required qualifications for enrollment.

This course introduces the emerging methodologies that combines geographic information systems with traditional “historical thinking.” First, students will learn basic technical skills in GIS used by spatial historians. Second, through weekly readings, students engage with scholarship and curation projects that use spatial history as a method. Last, students will undertake a small spatial history project.