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The Project

What We Are Doing:

​We are finalizing a gazetteer of 19th-century Spanish destinations and compiling  a database where  each travelogue is geoparsed, timelines are retrieved, and means of transportation are coded.  We are experimenting with mapping these datasets using GIS technology and adding timestamps and layers of historical maps contemporary to the times of travel. Our corpus includes a little over 100 digitized texts in Spanish, English, French, German, and Russian by male and female authors. At present, we are working on a scalable model for an interactive, time stamped map of up to 10 travelogues reflecting historically-accurate roads that users could produce in response to searches by author name, country of origin and gender, time of travel, means of mobility, places and monuments visited, or simply by keyword. The intersections of time and space will be visualized in a simulated 3D: as historical itineraries appear on the map, timelines and sections of texts relevant to your search will appear on the two sides of the screen.

Project Goals:

​Mobilize the capacity of historical GIS and 3D visualization to facilitate a better understanding of the chronotopes of travel literature vis-à-vis  the times and routes of travel.

 

Understand the networks of 19th-century travel destinations in correlation with the travelers' country of origin and the availability of means of transportation.

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Launch an informed discussion about the transnational social construction of "Spain" in the 19th century.

Follow Us If You...

  • are interested in how the perceptions of time are intertwined with means of transport, schedules, and places visited

  • want to know about how itineraries depend on a traveler's country of origin, gender, time, and means of mobility

  • are interested in intersections of fictional and mapped spaces

  • want to explore the uses of Historical GIS for literary cartography

  • are looking for a 19th century book about Spain

  • want to see who, when, and how visited certain location(s) within the current territory of Spain during the 19th century, and what they wrote about these locations.

  • are interested in evolution of roads and means of mobility

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