Join the Digital Humanities Initiative and the IHGC for a Book Talk with Edith Clowes:
Tuesday, December 3
12:30pm to 2:00pm
Wilson 117

Lunch will be provided and registration is requested by Friday, November 29th.

FREE Copies of the book are available while supplies last! Contact Dr. Meg Homer for more information: Meg.Homer@virginia.edu

Shredding the Map investigates Russian place consciousness in the revolutionary decade between the start of World War I and the end of the Russian civil war. Attachment to place is a vital aspect of human identity, and connection to homeland, whether imagined or real, can be especially powerful. Drawing from a large digital database of period literature, Shredding the Map investigates the metamorphic changes in how Russians related to places–whether abstractions like “country” and “home” or concrete spaces of borders, fronts, and edgelands–during these years. An innovative, digitally-aided study of Russia’s “imagined geography” during the early decades of the twentieth century, Shredding the Map uncovers vying emotional patterns and responses to Russian ideas of place, some familiar and some quite new. The book includes new visualizations that connect otherwise invisible networks of shared place, feeling, and perception among dozens of writers to trace patterns of geospatial identity. A scholarly companion to the “Mapping Imagined Geographies of Revolutionary Russia” website and database, this book offers an innovative analysis of place and identity beyond the centers of power, enhancing our perceptions of Russia today and encouraging debate about the possibilities for digital humanities and literary analysis.