In our assigned readings, our discussions in class, and my work with the World Historical Gazetteer and Recogito, I was most interested in relationships of space and place and the ways in which place names might reflect these relationships.

In my previous blog post, I described my search for “London” using the World Historical Gazetteer, which resulted in what might be described as the physical space of London, England, as well as other physical spaces referred to in whole or in part by “London,” such as Little London, a community in Jamaica. I considered how shared place names might reflect various relationships among places, such as imperial or colonial relationships, or instances in which those inhabiting a place might seek to form or emphasize a connection with another place through a shared place name.

Such intentional place naming might have an effect of collapsing spatial and temporal distance, as is the case in the documents I chose for my work with Recogito. A group of four short texts from 1927–1928 from my current research on Washington National Cathedral reveals intentional references to places, eras, and individuals in medieval Europe and in the “Old World” more generally. These references were made by an individual in America in the twentieth century in order to emphasize, if not form, a connection between these medieval places and people and the Episcopal cathedral in the nation’s capital.

The spatial and temporal distance of America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from medieval Europe is a tension that underlies this example and American medievalism more broadly. In what ways is it possible to create “medieval” architecture in a place that is spatially, temporally, and culturally distant from Europe in the Middle Ages? In the documents I chose for my work with Recogito, various materials brought to Washington National Cathedral, the provenance attributions of these materials, and the architectural style of the cathedral were intended to form and emphasize a connection between the place of the cathedral and the place of the “Old World.” In addition to the linguistic naming of a place, it seems to me that we can consider the ways in which an architectural style, as a kind of visual language, can construct and evoke a sense of place. It would be interesting to see what spatial results would be returned for “medieval” and “Gothic” if searched for using Frankenplace, a project of the Platial Analysis Lab that visualizes the geographic associations of Wikipedia entries, which Karl Grossner shared with us during class and which does not seem to be live at the moment, as Grossner noted.

Working with the World Historical Gazetteer and Recogito was useful in that these tools encouraged me to continue thinking about the relationships of space and place and how these relationships may be reflected in visualization tools. Aside from visualizing these relationships, however, I’m not sure whether the World Historical Gazetteer and Recogito are tools that I would return to for my particular research. While I do think that a visualization tool would be useful, ideally such a tool would allow me to visualize and interact with the spatial and temporal aspects of an object’s provenance, documenting the object’s positions and movements in space and time—perhaps something like Itinera?

Curry writes that “against the background of this rereading of the concepts of space and place, much that occurs today turns out to be a matter of place, not space. In fact, the concept of space typically operates either metaphorically or reflectively (680). Given Curry’s discussion of the terms “place” seem to be temporal geographical locals and “spaces” the metaphors and social dimensions that surround those. Interestingly, the Recogito tool does interesting work bridging space and place, giving users the ability to create placial awareness that connect people, places, events, and objects against the backdrop of a map. Stories, like the one I used for my foray into the tool (Eowyn Ivy’s, The Snow Child), can be retold/reconceived spatially. We change the parameters of the story, and therefore are able to analyze it from a different point of view.

As I’ve reflected on these weeks, I’ve tried to unpack how mapping relates to the work I do in composition and rhetoric. Initially I thought they had very little to do with one another. However, Curry’s article that discusses topos ended up surprising me. Indeed, the first time I heard of topos was not in relation to maps, but instead, in relation to writing and rhetoric—my current course of study. I used to teach my first-year writing students about this concept and how it related to classical rhetorical notions of argumentation. Topos (singular) or topoi (plural) are related to the Aristotelian rhetorical formulas of invention. This is the part of composing an argument where the rhetor (the speaker or writer) is coming up with their thesis in relation to their subject of discussion. “Topoi,” therefore, have been conceived of as topics. So seeing the word “topos” used in a discussion of maps was a strange convergence of worlds for me. How do mapping arguments and mapping places compare, I had to ask myself? And, just as important, how do they diverge?

“Indeed, if the word topos itself emerged after the invention of writing, it is nonetheless useful to try to rethink the topographic against the background of verbal activities that do not involve writing. I find telling the connection between the rhetorician’s use of ‘‘topics’’ and the use in oratory of memory systems that rely upon the construction of a memory palace. It has long been recognized that while users of Western languages are, by and large, notoriously bad at holding lists of unrelated things in memory, when those things are embedded in a narrative or associated with symbols they become far easier to remember.” (683)

Curry gives us some insight into the relationship between space and argumentation here. He discusses how topos has much of its initial history to credit to writing. I find it equally telling that when we, teachers of writing, instruct students how to compose scholarly pieces we often ask them to “carve out a space in the conversation” or “survey the landscape of the literature.” We seem beholden to metaphors of mapping to conceive of the way we construct arguments, forward claims, and respond to counterarguments.

Curry also hearkens back to classical rhetoric’s investment in memory (as opposed to written language) and the way that arguments were conceived of (or “mapped”) in ways that would make sense orally. Ancient Greeks were wary of writing because they were worried about how it would affect memory (which they greatly valued). Contemporary scholars of reading also interestingly note that as we read physical books our minds remember where on the page, and where in the book certain things happen. We “map” stories by their places and spaces. This is something that reading online confuses for contemporary students—as we are unable to remember where things are in the same way that we can with print texts. It messes up our memories, our brains.

So ultimately, even though I didn’t expect there would be much about my area of expertise represented in these mapping weeks, I’ve been very surprised! There is a great deal of convergence, actually.