Projects

Mapping Violence in Early Modern Italy (co-PI, Dr. Colin Rose, Brock University, Canada)

This collaborative project employs spatial analysis to identify long-term trends in violence between 1400 and 1700 in Bologna, Modena, Venice, and their subject territories. The PIs will identify incidents of violence in archival documents and compile and code them to create a database. Over 30 attributes correlated with violence will be coded into the database including age, gender, weapon used, sentence (if known), date, and geographical location of the incident. After creating this database, a Geographic Information System (GIS) program will be used to spatially analyze this attribute data. In addition, network analysis software will map networks of social connections to compare with the findings of the GIS analysis. This analysis focuses on the following research questions: what are the long-term patterns of violence in Early Modern Northern Italy? What do these patterns tell us about changes and/or continuities in society? What do patterns of violence tell us about about politics and governance? How do the patterns that can be identified compare between the various political entities on the Italian peninsula? The outcome of this project will be a collaborative, searchable database facilitating comparative studies of violence in Early Modern Italy and analysis of long-term trends. This research will add to our understanding of the causes and effects of violence over the long-term.

Archlive: Mapping History in Mayor Ivan Allen’s Atlanta

Collaborators: Tanya Gupta, Benjamin Pooser, Anthony Marshall, Daniel A.Wade, Matthew S. McKelvey, Akib Bin Nazim

This android app enables a physical tour of key events and places from Atlanta’s civil rights era based on documents in the digitized Ivan Allen Mayoral Archive. Users will be able to visit  key places like the former site of the Peyton Rd. wall, a barrier that was erected to segregate Atlanta’s Black and white neighborhoods, the former sites of the Atlanta Braves stadium, the Summerhill neighborhood, and the Sweet Auburn district. Geo-location will enable them to pull up information on the site, interviews, and pictures.

Ivan Allen Digital Archive Pedagogy Project

Collaborators: Dr. Nicholas Sturm

http://allenarchive.iac.gatech.edu/exhibits

This project is developing pedagogical materials and online exhibits to promote the use of digital archival materials in the classroom in conjunction with the 30 year anniversary of the founding of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech. The Ivan Allen Digital Archive is a digital humanities project that collects the digitized mayoral records of Ivan Allen, Jr., the 52nd mayor of Atlanta, from 1962 to 1970. The archive collects material from one of the most historic decades in Atlanta’s history. It functions as the primary archival resource for the history of Mayor Allen’s role in the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the history of race relations in 1960s Atlanta, the construction of the Atlanta Stadium, and the massive changes in desegregation, infrastructure, housing, and transportation overseen by Allen’s administration. Our work is focused on developing a Digital Toolkit for the Ivan Allen Digital Archive so undergraduate students and community members can understand the value of archival research, see exhibits that demonstrate ways to use archival documents, and locate documents, videos, and photographs based on topic. The Digital Toolkit will include (1) an introduction to archival research, including its scope and value, (2) an introduction to the Ivan Allen Digital Archive, including historical context, (3) lesson plans for classroom and community courses, (4) assignment sheets, (5) activities, lectures, and self-study materials, and (6) references. It will be a comprehensive resource that will be developed and used in Georgia Tech’s curriculum and accessible to the broader community via the Ivan Allen Digital Archive’s existing Omeka site.