#5 COORDINATES (Spring 2018)

Digital Mapping & 18th-century Visual, Material, and Built Cultures

Art history’s digital turn has been stimulated by the possibilities of spatial research. Spurred by the collection, preservation, and distribution of art historical data in digital space—practices that have both collapsed and expanded our own discursive geographies—scholars have exploited the potential of geospatial analysis for art historical study. These new methods are particularly promising for the study of the early modern world, which has been fruitfully understood through the prisms of connections and exchanges that crossed world regions and defied the boundaries drawn on static maps. Digital mapping platforms and applications like CartoDB, Neatline, ArcGIS, Leaflet, and MapBox have made it possible, for example, to visualize the movement of people, such as artists, through temporal and geographic space, thus allowing us to reimagine personal and material contacts in tangible ways. Moreover, the dynamic lives of mobile and fungible objects can be displayed in extended and often circuitous trajectories, thus encouraging the kind of nonlinear visual analysis that is foundational to the practice of art history. Georectification tools have further facilitated the reconciliation of historical figurations of space with contemporary visualizations, which allows competing spatial narratives to coexist productively in a digital realm, while also challenging the magisterial view offered by modern cartography.

In this issue of Journal18, we seek to feature current scholarship that relies on the analytical power provided by digital mapping interfaces for the study of visual, material, and built cultures during the long eighteenth century. How do digital humanities methods and tools shape our understanding of space and place in the early modern period? What impact might digital mapping have on our historical investigations of people, objects, and their environments?

Submissions may take the form of an article (up to 6000 words) or a project presented through a digital platform that takes full advantage of Journal18’s online format.
We also welcome proposals for shorter vignettes (around 2,500 words) that reflect on projects in progress or consider the potential for particular mapping methodologies for eighteenth-century art history.

Issue Editors
Carrie Anderson, Middlebury College
Nancy Um, Binghamton University

Proposals for issue #5 Coordinates are now being accepted. Deadline for proposals: April 1, 2017.

To submit a proposal, send an abstract (200 words) and a brief CV to editorjournal18.org and carrieamiddlebury.edu. Articles should not exceed 6000 words (including footnotes) and will be due on November 1, 2017.

For further details on the submission process see Future Issues (http://www.journal18.org/future-issues/) and Information for Authors (http://www.journal18.org/info/).