Conversations in the Digital Humanities #6
Mapping over Time: Researching and Teaching Soviet History through GIS
Seth Bernstein (Higher School of Economics, Moscow)
This discussion will focus on Seth Bernstein's work creating simulations and visualizations using geographical information systems (GIS) to understand the history of the USSR. Mapping provides a way of representing and understanding change over time, whether it is shifting world borders, Soviet air networks or Stalinist labor camps. The conversation will address the opportunities and problems Dr. Bernstein has had in working with GIS in the Soviet context, as a research historian, collaborator and a teacher.
Seth Bernstein is assistant professor of history at Higher School of Economics and writes about the impact of war on society, culture and politics, and the role of Soviet socialism and Soviet people in the world. He uses digital techniques like GIS and massive textual databases to extract and visualize data. His first book, an archival history of Stalinist youth culture, is Raised under Stalin: Young Communists and the Defense of Socialism (Cornell University Press, forthcoming 2017).
Discussants:
Viktor Lagutov
(Environmental Systems Lab, Environmental Sciences and Policy)
Charles Shaw
(Department of History)