Doctoral Dissertation Research: Digitally Mapping The Black Atlantic: Spatial Imagination and the Politics of Reappropriation between Africa and North America

这一博士论文研究项目借鉴了黑人大西洋研究、建筑史和建筑理论以及文化地理学等领域，寻求这个问题的答案：群体和个人如何以及为什么重新想象他们在黑色大西洋的物理环境？使用空间再利用的概念来探索动态且往往复杂的重新想象过程，这一术语指的是一个群体或个人通过有意识的过程重新获得先前想象的物理空间，而这种方式是对该群体或个人的贬低。在许多情况下，空间重新利用通过在这些地点创造新的观看、存在和成为的方式来关键地重新配置建成的环境。空间再利用反映了早期跨大西洋旅行的时期，以及一些人文景观被绘制为现代景观和另一些非现代景观的方式。随着跨大西洋旅行的开始，许多群体形成了空间想象力，或观看、整理和居住空间的方式，这是受到欧洲启蒙运动关于人的概念的启发，在这些概念中，种族和地点在建立一个人的身份方面的重要性是关键。因此，群体或个人占据空间的方式，特别是在黑色大西洋，从来都不是武断的，而总是受到他们发明或继承的关于特定地点的空间想象力的类型的影响。本博士论文研究项目主要有两个研究目标。第一个目标是发展一种关于黑大西洋空间再分配的扎根理论。第二个目标是创建一套黑色大西洋遗址的互动数字地图，这将有助于直观地记录关于种族和空间的思想从一个国家转移到另一个国家的情况。为了达到这些目标，博士生将借鉴来自美国和西非利比里亚的三个案例研究。利比里亚与美国的关系为景观和建筑包含现代性、自由和乌托邦等根深蒂固的意识形态概念提供了史无前例的证据，因为尽管利比里亚共和国是由自由的黑人在1822年正式建立的，但这个共和国最初是由美国殖民社会的白人成员在1801年设计的。这种长期而复杂的关系使得跨区域分析大西洋世界的种族和空间成为可能。为了直观地记录和分析空间挪用的情况，学生将使用历史档案和民族志研究方法，如集中访谈和参与者观察，以及使用地理信息科学中的参与式地图应用程序进行空间分析。这些方法的结合将促进四方研究方法，以了解非洲和美国之间关于空间思想的多方向交流。这项研究的结果将产生一张地理上多地点的数字地图，使研究人员能够将空间和空间要素(包括景观和建筑)作为关键的解释模式，并使用新的Web 2.0制图应用程序来研究、分析和呈现关于黑色大西洋空间关系的新方法。此外，数字地图将允许每个研究地点的社区成员绘制地图并了解其黑人大西洋社区的空间再利用过程。通过开发使用参与式地理信息系统和以社区为中心的实践进行协作研究的新教学材料和实践，这项研究还将为利比里亚和美国代表性不足的社区提供新的工具，以谈判和重新利用他们周围的空间。有了地理信息系统和其他数字工具，利比里亚政治上被剥夺公民权的社区在经历了14年的内战后，可以开始绘制自己的未来地图。该项目将调查重新想象非洲城乡空间的新挑战，并将为应对定居点、殖民主义和内战的空间遗产提供新的工具。此外，该项目将扩大北美科学学术中有关非洲及其侨民的地理知识的范围和数量。作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将提供支持，使有前途的学生建立一个强大的独立研究生涯。该奖项由NSF地理与空间科学项目和NSF国际科学与工程办公室共同支持。

Drawing upon the fields of black Atlantic studies, architectural history and theory, and cultural geography, this doctoral dissertation research project seeks answers to the question: How and why did groups and individuals re-imagine their physical environments in the black Atlantic? The dynamic and often complicated process of re-imagining is explored using the concept of spatial reappropriation, a term that refers to the conscious process through which a group or individual reclaims a physical space that was previously imagined in a way that was disparaging to that group or individual. In many cases, spatial reappropriation critically reconfigures built environments by creating new ways of seeing, being, and becoming in those sites. Spatial reappropriation responds to the period of early transatlantic travel and the ways in which some human landscapes were mapped as modern and others as non-modern. With the onset of transatlantic travel, many groups formed spatial imaginations, or ways of seeing, ordering, and inhabiting space, that were informed by European Enlightenment concepts of man in which the significance of race and place in establishing ones identity were key. The ways in which groups or individuals occupied space, particularly in the black Atlantic, therefore never were arbitrary but were always informed by the types of spatial imaginations they invented or inherited about a particular site. This doctoral dissertation research project has two main research objectives. The first objective is to develop a grounded theory of spatial reappropriation in the black Atlantic. The second objective is to create a set of interactive digital maps of black Atlantic sites that will help to visually document the transfer of ideas about race and space from one country to another. To meet these objectives the doctoral candidate will draw upon three case studies from the U.S. and the West African Republic of Liberia. Liberia's relationship with the U.S. provides unprecedented evidence for the ways in which landscape and architecture contain embedded ideological concepts like modernity, freedom, and utopia, because even though the Republic of Liberia was formally established by free blacks in 1822; the republic initially was contrived by white members of the American Colonization Society as early as 1801. This longstanding and complicated relationship enables a cross-regional analysis of race and space in the Atlantic world. To visually document and analyze instances of spatial reappropriation, the student will employ historical archival and ethnographic research methods like focused interviews and participant observations along with spatial analysis using participatory mapping applications drawn from geographic information science. The combination of these methods will facilitate a four-sided research approach towards understanding the multi-directional exchange of ideas about space between Africa and the U.S.The results of this study will produce a geographically multi-sited digital map that will enable researchers to take space and spatial factors including landscape and architecture as critical modes of interpretation and employ new Web 2.0 mapping applications to research, analyze, and present new ways of thinking about spatial relationships in the black Atlantic. In addition, the digital map will allow community members within each study site to map and learn about processes of spatial reappropriation in their black Atlantic community. By developing new pedagogical materials and practices for conducting collaborative research using participatory GIS and a community-centered praxis, this study also will provide underrepresented communities in Liberia and the U.S. with new tools for negotiating and reappropriating the spaces around them. With GIS and other digital tools, politically disenfranchised communities in Liberia can begin to map their own futures after fourteen years of civil war. This project will investigate new challenges to re-imagining urban and rural space in Africa and will offer new tools for confronting the spatial legacies of settlement, colonialism, and civil war. Furthermore, this project will broaden the scope and volume of geographic knowledge produced on Africa and its Diaspora in North American scientific scholarship. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career. This award is jointly supported by the NSF Geography and Spatial Sciences Program and the NSF Office of International Science and Engineering.