A Spatial Typology of Cinematographic Narratives

Spatiality, Maps, and Mathematics in Critical Human Geography: Toward a Repetition with Difference

Abstract: Quantitative and cartographic methods are today often associated with absolute, Newtonian conceptions of space. We argue that some such methods have not always been and need not be so allied. Present geographic approaches to relational space have been largely advanced through radical political economic and feminist thought. Yet we identify quantitative and cartographic methods (taking as exemplars a range of thinkers, some of whom were most prominent in the 1960s and 1970s) that can contribute to these approaches to relational space. We suggest neglected methods to revisit, new alliances to be forged with critical human geography and cultural critique, and possible paths to enliven geographical imaginations.

How can we map stories? A cybercartographic application for narrative cartography

Abstract: Narratives and places are deeply connected. Places often contribute to the shaping of a story, just as stories contribute to the production of spatial identities. Mapping narratives can thus have a double goal: to explore the geographic structure of a story, and to better understand the impact of stories on the production of places. While it may be easy to locate narratives as points on a map, this type of representation is rarely relevant in capturing and characterising the complex spatio-temporal dimensions of the narratives. In this paper, we present a cyber-cartographic application designed to address this issue and provide solutions to help properly map some of the many dimensions of narratives, including the places of the narration (geography), the connection between these places (geometry), as well as the temporal dimension inherent to storytelling. This application, originally developed to map contemporary Canadian cinematographic narratives (see examples here: http://scaquard.classone-tech.com/),...

Computing with many spaces: Generalizing projections for the digital geohumanities and GIScience

Abstract: The digital geohumanities---and geographic computation generally--- have advanced greatly by representing phenomena within geographic coordinate systems. More specifically, most visualizations and analyses only proceed once data are rendered into a single coordinate system via geolocation and one or more projections. But does it follow that geographic computation should require all phenomena to be represented in Euclidean or spherical geometry in a singular, absolute, Newtonian space?We suggest an approach to pluralizing the spaces available to geographic computation. We both supplement the technical architecture for projections and subtly reframe the purpose and meaning of projections. What we term numerical, generalized projections thereby become more central to GISystems. We suggest how existing libraries might be modified with minimal disruption (taking the widespread and foundational proj.4 library as example). We also envision modifications to existing OGC technical specifications for projections and coordinate systems. Finally, in conversation with the interpretative practice and nuanced spatialities of the digital geohumanities and critical geography, we further extend generalized projections to encompass spatial multiplicity, fragmented spaces, wormholes, and an expanded role for interruptions.This will facilitate: 1) interpretative approaches to scholarship and diverse constructions of space common in the humanities; 2) computational engagement with the ontological and epistemological commitments to relational space of critical human geography; and 3) scientific efforts to understand complex systems in the spaces and times that emerge from those systems' dynamics, revisiting a desire common in early quantitative geography; and 4) the desire for a broad basis of understanding geographic information in GIScience.

The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960

Abstract: Shows that Hollywood films operate within a set of assumptions, shared by different genres, directors and studios, about how a film should look and sound. Details how these conventions came to standardize the whole filmmaking process itself.

Atlas of the European Novel 1800-1900

Abstract: In a series of one hundred maps, Franco Moretti explores the fictionalization of geography in the nineteenth-century novel. Balzac's Paris, Dickens's London and Scott's Scottish Lowlands are mapped, alongside the territories of Spanish picaresque novels, African colonial romances and Russian novels of ideas, in a path-breaking study which suggests that space may well be the secret protagonist of cultural history.

Cartography I Mapping narrative cartography

Abstract: This report focuses on the growing interest in the relationship between maps, narratives and meta-narratives. Following a brief historical contextualization of these relationships, this report explores their current state in the Geoweb era. Using the distinction between story maps and grid maps as an analytical framework, I review emerging issues around the extensive use of technologies and online mapping services (i.e. Google maps) to convey stories and to produce new ones. Drawing on literature in film studies, literary studies, visual arts, computer science and communication I also emphasize the emergence of new forms of spatial expressions interested in providing different perspectives about places and about stories associated to places. In sum, I argue that mapping both vernacular knowledge and fiction is central understanding places in depth.

The Cultural Politics of Place: Local Representation and Oppositional Discourse in Two Films

Abstract: In recent years, an increasing number of geographers have been concerned to develop what might be called a cultural politics of place. They have argued that the representation of places is both constituted by, and legitimates, social power relations. Although it is often acknowledged that the process of representation is thus the focus of struggle, there have been very few studies of particular examples of resistance. The paper suggests that the main reason for this neglect may be the bipolar model of culture with which most cultural geographers appear to work. This model establishes a hegemonic ideology which becomes the focus of critique and a counter-hegemonic opposition about which it is ethically difficult to speak. This model has its strengths, but a weakness is its disturbing erasure of oppositional cultural practices from geographical studies. This paper therefore prefers to draw on the notion of cultural hybridity in order to be able to discuss two films made in the early 1970s by local groups in the East End of London. The paper argues that in order to understand how these films can be described as oppositional, their complex engagement with dominant discourses must be explored. Discussion of the films centres on contemporary definitions of 'community media' and on their realist aesthetic in order strategically to specifiy their oppositionality.

Novels, Maps, Modernity: The Spatial Imagination, 1850–2000

Abstract: List of Figures. Acknowledgements. Introduction: Orienting, Disorienting the Novel 1. On Getting Oriented 2. Melville's Zig-Zag World-Circle 3. Joyce's Geodesy 4. Pynchon's Baedeker Trick 5. On Getting Lost Notes. Bibliography. Index