March
12 ,
2004
Bob
Schwartz: Mapping History in
the Classroom
|
Photo: Todd M.
LeMieux
Bob Schwartz |
Visit the new Mount Holyoke Historical
Atlas on the Web and see the seminary where Mary Lyon convened
the first class of the College on November 8, 1837. Click ahead
a century and view the devastation wrought by the Great Hurricane
of 1938 that ripped out more than 90 percent of the trees from
Prospect Hill. Another click brings you to the present day. This
ever-expandable online resource is the brainchild of E. Nevins
Redmon Professor of History Bob Schwartz, a passionate practitioner
of historical geography and environmental history.
It all started some 15 years ago, when Schwartz was consulting a leading history
of nineteenth-century England and found that it contained not a single map. He
was astonished that such a work could be published with no geographical representation
of the subject matter. “As a social historian, I need to have a sense of
place in order to do my work,” Schwartz explained. “I’m attuned
to maps.”
This cartographic deficiency spurred
Schwartz to dig into the field of historical geography and make
it a centerpiece of his scholarly work in and out of the classroom.
Building on his long interest in quantitative approaches to history, he was
attracted to Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology
and, in 1997, he took an intensive week-long course at the University
of London in England, where pioneering work in historical GIS
was being done. Since then, Schwartz, who admits to being a “computer
nut,” has been combining cutting-edge GIS technology with primary-source
materials
to enhance our understanding of history.
Schwartz’s first project was to trace the effect of the development of
the British railway system on the country’s population distribution. “The
question is inherently spatial,” he said. He hypothesized that, contrary
to what other historians have suggested, the expansion of the rail system did
not promote rural migration to the cities, at least in the first several decades
following the arrival of routine rail service. Rather, rail service served
to hold rural inhabitants in the countryside by creating new economic opportunities
for marketing local products in major commercial centers. Using old maps and
railroad records, Schwartz created a series of maps reflecting the reach of
the rail system at different points in time. He coupled that data with census
data from the same time periods. His initial results have borne out his hunch.
While a substantial amount of Schwartz’s scholarly work has been in French
social history, he chose to work on England first because the necessary demographic
information already existed in “The Great Britain Historical GIS,” which
his colleagues at the University of Portsmouth, England, made available to
him. On leave this spring, Schwartz will be extending his research to France,
where historical GIS is in its infancy. The task of compiling the data will
be a greater challenge, he said, but one readily met, thanks to his research
on England.
Schwartz finds that GIS technology and
archival research also work well together as teaching tools.
He has designed course materials based on his railway project
for England that teach students how to use the GIS and census data to identify
patterns in demographic changes over time. One of his students used the course
as a springboard for writing a thesis on the effect of railroads on the development
of London. “The railway stations were the public palaces of the nineteenth
century,” Schwartz observed. Dartmouth College commissioned Schwartz
to write up his materials as part of its program in quantitative reasoning.
He looks forward to using his new work on France as the nucleus for a new
course.
Closer to home, Schwartz developed the Mount Holyoke Historical Atlas through
a fall semester course on the history of the campus. As a self-described “archive
rat,” he took great satisfaction in his students’ excitement in working
in the College’s archives. “It’s rewarding and gratifying for
the students to get their fingers dusty working with the old documents. They
came up with terrific stuff. I love the hunt and discovery. For me, there’s
no substitute for looking at a document written hundreds of years ago.” He
noted that the College’s archives are “tremendous. There are big
pieces of American history, not only women’s history, reflected in
the archives.”
One of Schwartz’s aims is to overcome many students’ fear of computing
and statistical analysis, which are basic tools for historical geography as well
as quantitative history—not to mention marketable skills. Sandy North ’05
said that working with Schwartz “has challenged the way I think about doing
history. He’s helped me learn how to work across boundaries between
traditional historical data and methodology, modern technology, and other
academic disciplines.”
Schwartz helped develop and teach a course
in quantitative reasoning with mathematics professors George
Cobb, Janice Gifford, and Harriet Pollatsek that introduces students
to basic methods of data analysis. To make the material more
palatable, he chooses topics that will pique students’ interest, such as witchcraft
in early modern Europe and New England. “I enjoy taking a group of students
with little or no background in computing or statistics and helping them do impressive
work in GIS or quantitative history within six weeks,” Schwartz said.
The skills they acquire, he added, prepare liberal arts students for more
opportunities within the world of work.
As for future course work, he spoke enthusiastically about the prospect
of applying GIS methods to study the AIDS epidemic and the effects of women’s
education in developing countries.
Schwartz has arranged for several students to do summer internships with
historical geographers in England and France. Last summer, he sent two
students to Annecy, at the base of the French Alps, where his French colleague
introduced them to the study of land surveys from the 1730s, the first
of such studies in Europe. Sandy North will have an internship this summer
at the University of Nottingham, using GIS to help analyze field data in
a local history project. Schwartz noted that these opportunities are not
only wonderful for the students, but also “useful
for me to have my students get additional training.”
For more information about Schwartz’s work, check out his
Web sites: http:www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/qrt02
and http:www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hatlas/atlas.
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