Imagine a digital map of the world visualizing all the places, countries, and regions mentioned from year to year in Norwegian literature between 1814 and 1905. Which contours of Norway and the world would emerge? And how can such a digital literary geography renew research and teaching of Norwegian literary history? That is what we aim to find out in this project.
The project will map the «imagined geographies» of Norwegian literature between 1814 and 1905. By imagined geographies we simply mean literary descriptions of space and place. Such descriptions are not neutral, but situated in historical and political contexts. Since the National library of Norway has digitized its entire collection of books, we can now use digital tools to map the geographical attention of authors from a birds-eye view. The project will use digital tools to systematize placenames from an archive of some 20 000 books published from the year of the Norwegian constitution to the year of Norway’s national independence.
Our goal is to “dig out” a hidden geography from the archive; to identify which conflicts and stereotypes it refers to; and to find out which function it may have had in literary history. We will try to identify the historical forces that drove literature’s geographical orientation throughout this period; but we shall also develop a new approach to literary history education in schools, where digital maps and perspectives of literary geography will form exploratory and interdisciplinary teaching strategies.
ImagiNation shall deliver new knowledge of how Norway and the world was depicted in 19th century literature; a new theoretical and methodological framework for literary history education; and a new infrastructure for digital humanities in Norway. Overall, the project will deliver digital, pedagogical and critical tools to educate pupils and teachers with historical knowledge and critical awareness of how cultural expressions create social realities.
Reiser i litteraturen er temaet for NORD2111 – Litteratur før 1900 høsten 2020. Gjennom utvalgte nedslag i 1800-tallets litteratur skal vi undersøke reisens forhold til litteraturen – fra romantikernes sentimentale og fantastiske reiser ved århundrets begynnelse til polfarerne og storbyenes flanører ved århundrets slutt. 1800-tallet er en spesielt interessant periode å studere reiselitteratur opp mot: […]
Til høsten skal vi i emnet Litteratur, teknologi og medier utforske forholdet mellom litterære beskrivelser av steder og historisk bestemte teknologier. Emnet tar for seg fem skandinaviske romaner utgitt mellom 1887 og 2017. Vi skal studere hvordan disse romanenes behandling av steder også rommer beskrivelser av, forhold til og symptomer på teknologiske endringer. Hvordan preger teknologi menneskets forhold til sine […]
Av Marit Sjelmo Det er ikke bare studentene som har kollokviegruppe og hjemmelekser. I TMBs lesesirkel leser og diskuterer vi også litteratur som har relevans for de faglige interessene til forskningsgruppen – blant annet teori om litteratur og geografi, kart, steder og romlighet, teori om litteratur og teknologi, og studier i nye forskningsmetoder innen digital […]
By Joachim Friis In the very beginning of the year where no sign of pandemic crisis had made its way to our latitudes, a big part of the research group on Literature, Technology and Media travelled to Paris. Here, we had been kindly hosted by Centre Universitaire de Norvège à Paris (CUNP) to gather scholars […]
On May 20 we submitted our application to The Research Council of Norway for the project ImagiNation. Mapping the Imagined Geographies of Norwegian Literature from 1814 to 1905. The proposed project combines literary geography, infrastructure studies and DH methods (GIS, NER, collocation analysis) to study the shifting (and often conflicting) geographies that 19th century writers […]
