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Collaborative student-faculty research projects centered in the locale of residential liberal arts colleges let students engage in a variety of learning experiences and high impact practices including undergraduate research, civic engagement, and multidisciplinary approaches to complex problems. Students at Bucknell University, as part of the Stories of the Susquehanna Valley Project, gathered stories from the Marcellus Shale region in the Susquehanna watershed of how the boom in natural gas drilling is transforming communities and cultural landscapes. This seminar will explore the possibilities digital humanities offers students to incorporate technologies such as ArcGIS and Google Earth into storytelling of their environment. Focusing on the full length of the Susquehanna River, Katherine Faull, Professor of German and Humanities and Alf Siewers, Associate Professor of English at Bucknell University, will provide examples and lead discussion of how students’ digital learning may foster cooperation between universities, public agencies (local, regional and national) and NGOs in successful efforts to raise environmental awareness.
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Stories of the Susquehanna: Digital Humanities, Spatial Thinking, and Telling the historia of the Environment
Katherine Faull, Professor of German and the Humanities
Alf Kentigern Siewers, Associate Professor of English and Affiliated Faculty Member in
Environmental StudiesBucknell University
NITLE Seminar, October 9, 2012
Stories of the Susquehanna
• Multiyear, multi-institutional collaborative student/faculty project
• Goal—– produce traditional print medium book series that
highlights the narratives of place in the Susquehanna
– Produce multimedia, interactive sites that complement the print series and also act as stand-alone resources for K-12 and college curricula
The problem: How to engage students in local geo-history
• Civic engagement– Summer Writers Institute
(2009)• Chesapeake Conservancy—
John Smith Trail Connector Trail (2009-12)
• Digital storytelling– Stories from Marcellus Shale
(2010)• Mellon foundation grant
(2012)• Interdisciplinary course (IP)– 2011, 2012
Students commonly write history as:
A linear temporal narrative imposed on complex signifying grids
They employ a univocal narrative voice
And thus provide a single perspective
Potential of Digital Humanities
• Realization that “The extra dimensions and movements possible in spatial representations compared to linear temporality are crucial in opening up the cartographic imagination to multi-focal, multi-causal, and non-narrative modes of historical representation.”
• (Katherine Hayles, p. 50)
Summer Writers Institute (2009)
John Smith TrailSponsored by the Chesapeake Conservancy, this was a multi-year research project that involved undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and local agencies
Smith’s 1612 map--detailQuestion remains as to where these locations are today and whether they can even be found as John Smith’s map is not isomorphic, that is is not drawn to scale to represent landscape and location
Students georectified Smith’s map according to different scholarly interpretations1. Clark and Eschleman place all Smith’s sites south of Harrisburg:
Sasquesahanough at Washington Boro,
Attaock around York, Quadroque near
Middletown, Tesinigh around Lebanon, Utchowig around
Harrisburg, Cepowig “at the head of
Willowby’s River” (Bush River) in Maryland[produces geographical error of between 10-30 miles]
from: H. Frank Eshleman, Lancaster County Indians: Annals of the Susquehannocks and Other Indian Tribes of the Susquehanna Territory from About the Year 1500 to 1763, the Date of their Extinction (Lititz, Pa.: Express Printing Co., 1909), 12-13.
Smith’s map geo-rectified according to Guss and DonehooGuss and Donehoo suggest a more northern location for the Susquehannock villages:
• Attaock in the region of the Juniata river• Quadroque at the confluence at Sunbury• Tesinigh on the North Branch in the region of Wyoming• Utchowig on the West Branch in the vicinity of Lock Haven
Taking the “Northern view” produces geographical error of up to 30 miles again
Cepowig is off the map, however.
From: A.L. Guss, Early Indian History on the Susquehanna (Harrisburg, Pa.: Lane S.
Hart, Printer, 1883), 5-6.
Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, Bulletin 30, Part 2, edited by Frederick Webb Hodge (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1910), 655.George P. Donehoo, A History of the Indian Villages and Place Names in Pennsylvania, (Lewisburg, Pa.: Wennawoods Publishing, 1999), 142.
The John Smith Trail
Lower Susquehanna River (Havre de Grace –Harrisburg)
Main Branch (Harrisburg-Sunbury)
West Branch (Sunbury-Lock Haven)North Branch (Sunbury-Cooperstown)
Washington Borough Sites
Emily Bitely ’11 ArcMap and GIS
Primary Resources: 18th – 19th Century colonial surveys designating property boundaries with “witness markers” (e.g. trees, posts, and stones)
18th – 19th Century accounts by explorers such as botanists John Bartram & Frederick Pursh provide additional descriptions of contact-era landscapes
Details of manmade & natural features from unpublished 18th Century manuscript maps
Completed areas of focus: Washington Boro, Sunbury confluence, Tioga, and the Wyoming Valley
Emily Bitely ‘11
Incorporating Modern GIS DataLayers: American Indian sites, Wallace’s Indian Paths, and streams
Georeferenced German North Branch map
Oil and Gas Wells (DEP GIS dataset, 2006) categorized by site status—Active, Inactive, Abandoned, Proposed but Never Materialized
Mapping Moravians and Native Americans
• Faull’s research into Moravian and Native peoples’ interactions in the 18th century
• Initially supported by NEH Collaborative Research grant;
• Development of student expertise– Chesapeake Conservancy summer grants to
students– Degenstein Foundation grants for student
stipends for summer research– John Ben Snow Foundation grant for summer
writers’ workshop
Fenimore Cooper and Joseph Priestley
• Siewers led student research on mapping of late 18th c./early 19th c. literature of region
• Connections with James Fenimore Cooper• Landholdings of Joseph Priestley• Grants from John Ben Snow foundation, Bucknell
Scadden fellowship, Degenstein foundation and Mellon foundation to support student summer research
• Students using GIS and ArcMap, and Google Earth
Map of Susan Fenimore Cooper’s world
Teaching new courses: learning new skills
• Importance of a LONG TERM mentor/mentee relationship—e.g. Presidential Fellow, Steffany Meredyk
• Allows for collaborative learning of new skills• Allows for complementary learning and
application of skills• Student skills transferable between GIS, History,
Humanities, English, Environmental Studies courses
Historical GIS mapping
Google Earth mappingBethany Dunn ‘14
Conclusions
• What are we learning/ teaching?– New ways of thinking about representation– -New ways of studying and experiencing landscape
as symbolic narrative– New ways of thinking about cause/effect
relationships– New ways of thinking about dominant/subaltern
power relationships and their representations– Valuable transferable skills
Bibliography
1. Environmental phenomenology, layers of stories as landscape:• The Fate of Place, Edward Casey (California UP 1998)• The Embers and the Stars, Erazim Kohák (Chicago UP,
1987)• “Cyberpunks in Cyberspace,” Paul Edwards in Cultures of
Computing, ed. Susan Star (Keele UP, 1995)• “Ecosemiotics,” Winfried Nöth, Sign System Studies, vol.
26 (1998)– (and other articles online that can be found by Googling the
term)
Bibliography (cont.)
2. Cultural Landscape and mapping• Radical Hope, Jonathan Lear (Harvard, 2006)• Margaret Wickins Pearce and Renée Pualani
Louis, “Mapping Indigenous Depth of Place” American Indian Culture and Research Journal, (2008)
