• Introduction: Creating new worlds out of old texts

    Author(s):
    Elton Barker (see profile) , Stefan Bouzarovski, Leif Isaksen
    Date:
    2016
    Group(s):
    Ancient Greece & Rome, Digital Humanists
    Subject(s):
    History, Ancient--Historiography, Greece, Greece, History, Ancient, Classical literature, Greek literature, Cultural geography, Digital humanities
    Item Type:
    Book chapter
    Tag(s):
    classics, Greek historiography, literary geography, Ancient Greek historiography, Ancient Greek history, Classical Greek literature
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6SP86
    Abstract:
    Despite initial expectations that globalization would eradicate the need for geographical space and distance, "maps matter" today in ways that were unimaginable a mere two decades ago. Technological advances have brought to the fore an entirely new set of methods for representing and interacting with spatial formations, while the ever-increasing mobility of ideas, capital, and people has created a world in which urban and regional inequalities are being heightened at an accelerating pace. As a result, the ability of any given place to reap the benefits of global socio-technical flows mainly hinges on the forging of connections that can transcend the limits of its material location. In contrast to the traditional "topographic" perspective, the territorial extent of economic and political realms is being increasingly conceived through a "topological" lens: as a set of overlapping reticulations in which the nature and frequency of links among different sites matter more than the physical distances between them. We have decided to respond to these analytical and methodological challenges by focusing on ancient Greek literature: a corpus of work that has often been characterized as being free of the constraints imposed by post-Enlightenment cartography, despite setting the foundations of many contemporary map-making methods. In the 12 chapters that follow, we highlight the rich array of representational devices employed by authors from this era, whose narrative depictions of spatial relations defy the logic of images and surfaces that dominates contemporary cartographic thought. In fact, many of the disciplinary and conceptual perspectives explored here are at their inception, and have a more general relevance for the wider community of humanities and social science researchers interested in novel mapping techniques.
    Metadata:
    Published as:
    Book chapter    
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    6 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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