Update on project evolution - USC Reconstruction alumni

Given that I have been traveling for most of the time that has transpired since the last blog post (and thus unable to use ArcGIS), sharing a project update today seems a bit premature.  That being said, I know we have just three weeks left between now and the final paper submission, so I suppose it's now or never!

Update on planned maps

Sam, Lelia, and I were able to spend some time with the dataset last Monday and realized that it was counting some of the events in the USC Reconstruction alumni lives as alumni (i.e., their birth dates and dates of passing were coding to their identity codes), so Dr. Kennedy graciously spent some time over the holiday fixing that issue for us.  (We heard from Lelia today that she was able to manipulate the data as we had hoped, so there is good progress!)  Given the length of time remaining the course, I did realize that creating "snapshots" of the locations of the alumni at various intervals in the late 19th c. (i.e., where were they all in 1880, 1890, and 1900) is probably not going to be feasible to create for now, so I have spent some time thinking about what maps are feasible.  There are a few maps that I plan to try and create this week that should nonetheless provide us with some interesting spatial analysis:

  • Map of each alumnus's birth place versus his place of death: by creating maps that show us where each alumnus was born and died should provide us with an interesting picture of whether or not where was widespread "outmigration" from South Carolina across the entire dataset.  I'll be playing around with the symbology here, but perhaps little arrows to indicate the direction from birth to death will do the trick?
  • Map of each of the various professions: I think we can still, by regrouping various professions (ministers, academics, doctors, lawyers, public servants, etc.), determine whether or not there are any spatial patterns that emerge from these data, such as whether or not there were concentrations of alumni of specific professions in various cities or states.  I am cautiously optimistic that at least a few of the professions are going to provide us with some insights.
  • Maps of alumni concentrated around historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs): this is a topic of interest specifically for Dr. Brown, with whose class we are collaborating on these maps.  Given that we already know where the HBCUs are located, I am not sure if there is additional spatial analyses related to the alumni who worked with these HBCUs that would be illuminating, but I will continue to brainstorm and to discuss.

Update on literature review

Most of the literature that I have already reviewed relates to the experience of these alumni while at USC, not their afterlives.  Dr. Brown gently guided me towards studying more about the latter, which is what the biographies and our dataset provide us with.  Given the geographic breadth of these alumni's lives, it will be a vast literature, so I will be consulting with him about what literature might help us to contextualize these data in a meaningful way.

All in all, some progress despite not working with ArcGIS this week.  An update next week should be much meatier!

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