GIS

Last week I met up with a visiting grad student, Kyle, from UT-Austin who is doing research on Houston's highways for his dissertation. My former topic was the 610 loop, and highway designs and how they construct space and change the the ethics of place, but I am gladly ceding that field of investigation to him. When I learned that Kyle is hoping to use Geographic Information Systems, or GIS, in his project, I remembered how interested I was in using GIS as well. I don't think I would use it in the traditional sense, to show movement (or people, resources, etc) over time, but I think it is a useful analytic tool for all types of disciplines, and the humanities (and the historian) just needs to harness it in the way that is most beneficial to their research. Historians of the 20th century would find GIS especially useful because of all of the data that we have access to. Going beyond the written word to visual representations of changes in the historical record is an innovative way to address different types of historical problems and reach out to different types of audiences in a more interactive way. Colin Gordon's study on St. Louis, Mapping Decline, made exclusive use of historic data on redlining and racial zoning in St. Louis to write his book and create a GIS web project. He is an inspiration.