Visualizing Textile Circulation in the Dutch Global Market, 1602–1795: Methods and Process
Thursday, April 8, 12-1pm EDT
In this talk Carrie Anderson and Marsely Kehoe will discuss their digital art history project on transoceanic circulation of South Asian textiles. The central component of their ongoing digital art history project, “Visualizing Textile Circulation in the Dutch Global Market, 1602–1795,” is an online Visual Glossary of historic textiles. This resource unites three different data types (textual, visual, and material) and provides users with open access to data, images, and dynamic visualizations. In this presentation, Dr. Anderson and Dr. Kehoe will introduce their project’s working proof-of-concept, which incorporates over 10,000 data points drawn from Dutch East and West India Company records between the years 1710 and 1715. They will discuss not only the challenges of building data sets from archival sources, but also the semantic implications of historic and cotemporary data structures. They will also talk about the process of building interactive web applications, which were made by Middlebury College undergraduate students using the programming language R over the course of a 4-week pilot course called “Data Science Across Disciplines.”
This project is supported by a Gladys Krieble Delmas grant through our own JHNA.
To register for this session, please click here.
The Material Histories of the Indian Ocean World webinar brings together scholars from different disciplines that work primarily on the study of artistic materials produced, circulated, and used in and through the Indian Ocean World (IOW) post the advent of European mercantile powers in this part of the world. This webinar seeks to look at the study of transcultural and transoceanic objects, architecture, and material culture through an interdisciplinary perspective. Using their expertise in different types of materials, regions, and methodological questions related to the IOW, participants will discuss their own research experiences and methodological approaches while also providing insight into the challenges of such research. The series runs from March 24, 2021 – April 22, 2021.
For the full series schedule and to register, please click here.