Chorographies were promiscuously inclusive natural and civil histories of domestic European localities that described everything from natural productions to social customs and political structures. The natural history of the colonial Americas was written in this heterogeneous vein, driven by a European desire to organize New World nature as a material resource for the metropolis and to understand the ethnography of native and enslaved peoples. While the simplicity of the Linnaean system stimulated both amateur and professional botanizing, and while Linnaeus actively coordinated the far-flung efforts of volunteers and traveling agents sent from Uppsala, natural history remained more than the will to classify; rather, it continued to accommodate and ecpress a range of drives and purposes. Not the least of these was to transmute the experience of intercolonial travel into descriptive narratives for both learned and polite metropolitan audiences.
- Delbourgo, J. (2006). A most amazing scene of wonders: Electricity and enlightenment in early America. Cambridge: MA: Harvard University Press. p. 172
For more on chorography, see Michael Shanks‘ page. He uses chorographies to ” raise questions again of the way we conceive and how we relate land and inhabitation, critically. And fundamentally to reconnect place and land with the rhetorical features of “memorable places”. See also the definitions found on the Humbot project website, hosting a contemporary chorography realized in between 1999 and 2004. Megan Rowe also has a substantial page containing sources and notes on the topic.
Michael Shanks is director of the Stanford Humanities Lab and visiting professor of Archaeology at Durham University. He is also one the faculty founders of the Stanford metamedia lab, which “pursues research and pedagogy in design history and media materialities”.
I’m wondering how digital humanities are slowing configuring different ways to participate in contemporary chorographies. One example of this move is cultural analytics, spotted while wandering through etherealisation‘s blog.
