Networks in History: Data-driven tools for analyzing relationships across time

Previous NEH-funding made it possible for "Mapping the Republic of Letters" project to develop a series of visualization prototypes to analyze the geographic breadth, historical shape, and social composition of intellectual networks; tools that support a domain expert's capacity to make sense of complexity, rather than relying on automated reasoning. With this project we will develop our most successful visualization techniques to serve historical research with three user groups in mind: 1. Digital humanities scholars with the technical expertise to integrate our code into their own projects and web applications (the "widget" model); 2. Scholars seeking easy upload, exploration, and analysis of historical data sets, without having to touch any code; 3. Early modern scholars who want to use these tools to explore and analyze their own data in the larger context of data already collected for "Mapping the Republic of Letters.

Digging Into the Enlightenment: Mapping the Republic of Letters

The Digging Into the Enlightenment: Mapping The Republic of Letters project is a collaborative effort between humanities scholars and computer scientists at Stanford University and the University of Oklahoma in the United States, and at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Our research hypothesis is that we can revolutionize the practice of interpretive research in the humanities by integrating innovative visualization and annotation techniques into highly interactive tools for excavating and dissecting details about people, places, times, and relationships in large data sets. Our project focuses on the Electronic Enlightenment (EE), a University of Oxford collection currently containing more than 53,000 letters. The goal of the project is thus to develop new visualization techniques and tools that support research into the "Republic of Letters" by facilitating interpretation of the complex data sets that have been materialized from this predominantly textual archival collection

De uma "cientificidade difusa": o coronel e as práticas colecionistas do Museu Sertório na São Paulo em fins do século XIX

This article intends to examine the collecting practices of the private collection known as Museu Sertório, which became Museu Paulista's first main collection. For that, a brief biography of Colonel Joaquim Sertório, the owner of the Museum, will be presented, as well as aspects of the collections' organization, in order to reflect on Sertório's supposed dilettantism in scientific fields, since the museum was associated with an educational project of the period. A parallel between Museu Sertório and the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaelogy, of Oxford University, will also be made, in order to better understand its insertion in nineteenth-century São Paulo.Este artigo pretende examinar as práticas colecionistas realizadas em torno do Museu Sertório, uma coleção particular que veio a constituir o primeiro núcleo do acervo do Museu Paulista. Para tanto, serão apresentados alguns dados biográficos inéditos sobre o proprietário do Museu, o coronel Joaquim Sertório, bem como aspectos da organização das coleções, buscando, assim, refletir sobre o suposto amadorismo de Sertório no campo das ciências, uma vez que a abertura do acervo à visitação pública estava associada à intenção de vincular o museu a fins educativos. Procura-se, igualmente, traçar um paralelo entre a trajetória do Museu Sertório com a do Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaelogy da Universidade de Oxford, Inglaterra, a fim de melhor compreender a sua inserção na São Paulo de fins do século XIX

Invisible interpretations: reflections on the digital humanities and intellectual history

Much has been made of the digital humanities, yet it remains an underexplored field in relation to intellectual history. This paper aims to add to the little literature which does exist by offering a survey of the ideas and issues facing would-be practitioners. This includes: an overview of what the digital humanities are; reflections on what they offer intellectual history and how they may be problematic in regard to, first, accessing texts, and second, analysing source material; a conclusion with three reflections on future best practices – to be sceptical of digital sources, to be reflective of methodologies and how they may need to be modified when engaging with the digital humanities, and to embrace more directly the methodological, statistical, and technical aspects behind digital humanities. The aim is not to provide all the answers – at this stage that is impossible – but to be part of an emerging and ongoing discussion

Trayectorias y desafíos de la historiografía de los museos de historia natural en América Del Sur

Powerful tools of interchange and circulation of data and specimens, Natural History museums constituted themselves in several Latin-American countries, such as Argentine and Brazil as privileged loci of epistemic infrastructure since the nineteenth century. The museums gathered huge amounts of collections of surveys of territories and people, always proposed as comprehensive, ultimate and exhaustive endeavors, which made those institutions face the challenges of not only storing and displayng the collections and specimens but also how to order the latter in archives and catalogues that would make them intelligible. Problematizing issues already present in the nowadays consistent literature, including the Latin-American contribution, on museums, the paper discusses among other themes, the acritical identification between museums and the representation of nations and the recurrent notion of museums as place of memory. It proposes as a challenge to the new generation of scholar to ponder how to write these histories incorporating their human and non-human agents as well as the set of events and circunstances that generated their sucesses and failures.En el siglo XIX los museos de historia natural de América del Sur se constituyeron en instrumentos clave para el intercambio y la circulación de datos y especímenes y, en ese sentido, en loci privilegiados de la infraestructura de las ciencias y del saber. Almacenaron tal cantidad de objetos y colecciones que los organizadores de estas instituciones se enfrentaron al problema de cómo guardarlos y exhibirlos dándoles un orden que pudiera entenderse. Por eso, los museos no pueden separarse de la historia del papel, del archivo y de los catálogos. Este artículo repasa algunas cuestiones de la historiografía producida en las últimas décadas, discutiendo, entre otras cosas, la identificación acrítica entre museos, memoria y representación de la nación. A su vez, propone el desafío de cómo escribir la historia de los museos incorporando los agentes humanos y no humanos y el conjunto de circunstancias que sustentan sus éxitos y fracasos