The boundaries of spatial thinking have expanded greatly in the past decade. Driven by the success of such projects in solving real world problems, spatial analysis has found multiple modes of expression, notably within the field of digital humanities.
This curated panel, composed entirely of Vanderbilt University’s 2014-2015 HASTAC scholars, proposes lightning talks focused on pushing the boundaries of spatial literacy, while also centering on some of the main issues related to the analysis of spatial data. The general topics of the lightning talks range from the development of innovative pedagogical tools to encourage critical spatial thinking for K-12 students, to digital visualizations of material objects, to mapping visitor engagement and practices of personal curation in a museum setting, and the use of GeoJSON to encode geographic data structures. Examining different modalities as related to spatial analysis will enable us to re-assess various spatial literacies and their shifting roles on university campuses and beyond.
The relationship of this proposed panel to the conference theme(s) is multiple and due to the format of the curated panel, (with various lightning talks), the themes addressed during the session touch on many of conference guiding themes mentioned in the Call for Papers. To begin, and to only list a few, the shared emphasis on the value of spatial analysis across HASTAC scholars located in a wide range of disciplines— Engineering, Religious Studies, Spanish and Portuguese, English, Teaching and Learning, and Anthropology— speaks to the interdisciplinary nature of DH work. Furthermore, at least half of the proposed lightning talks for this specific panel discuss geospatial analysis in particular used in doctoral dissertation research providing interesting insights not only into the changing nature of humanities research and scholarship but also with respect to the communication of knowledge.