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Geographies of the Holocaust February 19, 2010
Friday, February 19, 2010
Geographies of the Holocaust
Anne K. Knowles, Middlebury College
3:30-5:00 PM, Waterman Memorial Lounge (Room 338), University of Vermont
This presentation will describe a series of prototype projects that are
assessing the potential for applying geographic methods to studying the
Holocaust, particularly GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and
geovisualization. Two projects will be highlighted: exploratory mapping
of the Nazi concentration camp system, focusing on the historical
geography of the system's creation and the deployment of labor at
subcamps; and the use of visual analysis to interrogate the spaces of
Auschwitz. These methodological experiments are laying the groundwork
for what the participating scholars and students hope will be a new
research agenda in Holocaust Studies, Geography, and the history of
World War II.
Anne Kelly Knowles is Associate Professor of Geography at Middlebury
College. Previous teaching positions include the University of Wales,
Aberystwyth; Wellesley College; and George Washington University. She
earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in Geography from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. As an historical geographer, Knowles has long
advocated geographical approaches to historical research and teaching,
including the use of geographic information systems (GIS) in historical
scholarship. She has edited four volumes of essays on historical GIS,
including theme issues of /Social Science History/ and /Historical
Geography/ and two books, /Past Time, Past Place: GIS for History/
(2002) and /Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS Are
Changing Historical Scholarship/ (2008), both with ESRI Press. In her
own research she has applied GIS methods to studying the development of
the American iron industry in the early nineteenth century and the
battle of Gettysburg. She is currently working with an international
group of scholars using GIS and geovisualization to study the
geographies of the Holocaust.
Knowles' particular research specialty is nineteenth-century
industrialization and immigration. Her first book, /Calvinists
Incorporated: Welsh Immigrants on Ohio's Industrial Frontier/
(University of Chicago, 1997), explored the influence of Welsh Calvinism
on immigrants' economic behavior. She is now completing her second major
study, a book titled /Mastering Iron: The Struggle to Modernize an
American Industry, 1800 - 1868/, under contract with University of
Chicago Press. Her iron research has been supported by fellowships from
the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for
the Humanities. Prototype projects toward developing a Holocaust
Historical GIS (2008-2010) have been funded by the National Science
Foundation.
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