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The Terrain of History

The Social and Cultural Geography of Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro

An international collaborative research project sponsored by the Stanford Humanities Center

Project Overview

The proposed project seeks to combine past efforts and enable future collaboration among three urban history/geography research groups. All three projects focus on detailed reconstructions of urban spaces and histories in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, during the nineteenth century. When combined and, to the extent possible, harmonized along a common geospatial rubric, these three research projects will provide the most detailed and complete geohistorical archive ever assembled for a city in South America. Additional research projects involving geography and historical analysis in other parts of Brazil will be associated with the workshop via the Humanities Network.

At UNICAMP, the Cecult research group has developed a large comparative urban geography project involving neighborhoods in nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Among the important results of this research, the UNICAMP group has created an extensive database of geographically specific information and detailed vector graphic maps. At Brown, James Green is beginning a research project entailing a similarly detailed analysis of another neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro. To date, Green has created a detailed vector graphic map of the neighborhood around the Praça da Constituição and begun to compile additional data regarding the residents and businesses in the area. Finally, at Stanford, the research group headed by Zephyr Frank has nearly completed a digital map of the entire city of Rio de Janeiro, including a vector graphic file that will contain all 15,000 urban parcels in the central parishes of the city. In addition to this, Frank has collected over 300,000 names and addresses of residents and businesses in Rio de Janeiro during the second half of the nineteenth century.

Our project hinges on the idea of international collaborative work. Too often, projects of the scale and complexity contemplated here are undertaken in isolation. The opportunity to share data, harmonize and standardize modes of presentation and archiving, and to learn from diverse methodological perspectives is lost when researchers work in isolation or ignorance of one another. In the humanities, owing to limited funding resources and a culture of solitary research, the challenge to international collaborative work is all the greater. For this reason, we are encouraged and inspired by the initiative the Stanford Humanities Center has taken, through the Humanities Network and funded Network Groups, to help humanists overcome the obstacles of distance and funding in collaborative work.

Core Project Participants

Claudio Batalha, UNICAMP (Brazil), Professor, Department of History and Center for Cultural Studies (Cecult)

Sidney Chalhoub, UNICAMP, Professor, Department of History and Cecult

Nicole Coleman, Stanford University, Humanities Center, Techn ology Projects Manager

Zephyr Frank, Stanford University, Assistant Professor, Department of History

James N. Green, Brown University, Associate Professor, Department of History, Director, Center for Latin American Studies

Maria Clementina Pereira Cunha, UNICAMP, Professor, Department of History and Cecult

John Logan, Brown University, Professor, Department of Sociology, Director Spatial Structures Center

Ian Read, Stanford University, Graduate Student, Department of History

Meredith Williams, Stanford University, Branner Library, GIS Specialist

Kari Zimmerman, Stanford University, Graduate Student, History Department

Project Plan: Schedule and Output (Year 1)

The first year of the project will involve six virtual meetings and one substantial face-to-face gathering. To the extent that experts in historical geography, GIS, or allied fields are identified in other institutions in the United States or abroad, we see the virtual meetings as excellent opportunities to invite these scholars to join our discussions in person or via videoconferencing/webcasting technology.

Fall 2005 Prior to the Stanford workshop meeting, we envision a series of three virtual workshops conducted using the videoconferencing facilities of the SHC and similar facilities at Brown and UNICAMP. These virtual meetings, each of which will run about 2 hours, will allow the groups to share current results, explain methods, and plan for the workshop at SHC.

Winter 2006 The workshop will meet in person at the Stanford Humanities Center for a week-long (Weds.-Sat.) series of discussions, including the participation of experts in the fields of geography, GIS mapping, and related fields, drawn from the Bay Area academic community. This meeting will take place in winter 2006. We envision a one-day, public symposium to close the workshop.

Spring 2006 After the meeting at Stanford, a series of three follow-up virtual meetings are also contemplated.

Final Report and Ongoing Collaboration

At the end of the first year, the three core groups will collaborate on a project report. The output of the project will include a joint website hosted by SHRN with links to common datasets and maps in order to facilitate ongoing collaboration, including joint production and analysis of maps and historical materials.