Spatial History
For this week’s readings, we dove into explanations,
theories, and proposals of spatial history. I could write this post and not
tell you I was a bit confused. However, that would be a lie.
Caught off guard by the complexity that is spatial history
and its role in digital history was hard for me to grasp. I contribute most of
this confusion to its forward-like thinking- something so vastly different from
everything that I have ever known. What I mean is, spatial history is a
completely new way of thinking, and any introduction of “ new wave- type
thinking” is difficult to grasp only in the fact that you have to break the
confines of original thought.
After racking my brain, for what felt like forever, I
finally found a foundation of understanding. One point that I found most
interesting was in the articled titled “What is Spatial History?” which pointed
out that historians focus their writings and study on explaining changes over
time. However, this can often make history feel as if it took plan “on the head
of a pin.”
Personally, I find this to, at large, be true in my history
classes especially. I have had history as part of my education ever since it
began, but it is always harder to fully grasp because the history stories end
up being just spoken and written words. In class, there are always showings of
charts. However, there was never a real connection between space, place, and
history.
After briefly studying and learning about spatial history, I
feel that historical learning has been hindered without it. Because, I am now
beginning to see, that history cannot fully be comprehended without all of
these connections. As the article later pointed out, history covers political,
social, class, cultural and so many more changes; but rarely covers the spatial
changes that serves as the critical connecting point between the two.
This makes me want to take this new-age historical concept
into schools, because I truly believe it would enable students to better
understand and comprehend connections between history.
good way to tackle the readings!
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