CESTA Seminar | C. Armand "MADSpace, a digital platform devoted to the spatial history of advertising in modern Shanghai (1905-1949)"

Date
Tue November 14th 2017, 12:00 - 1:15pm
Event Sponsor
Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA)
Location
Bldg. 160, Rm. 433A
CESTA Seminar | C. Armand "MADSpace, a digital platform devoted to the spatial history of advertising in modern Shanghai (1905-1949)"

Born as a digital companion to her PhD project devoted to the spatial history of advertising in modern Shanghai (1905–1949), MADSpace (http://madspace.org/) has gradually become an integrated platform and a multi-actorial database. As this project’s primary goal is to shift the gaze from cultural studies to a spatial and social history of advertising, it is based on a wide range of primary sources (municipal and business archives, personal papers, press advertisements, professional handbooks, original sketches street photos and videos). First intended to collect and connect multimedia sources and analytical materials (graphs, maps, trees), MADSpace has come to serve as an open laboratory to invent alternative ways of doing and writing history in the digital age. This presentation will trace the genesis of the platform and present its main functionalities, discuss its current potentials and shortcomings, and imagine its future developments. Cécile Armand is currently a postdoctoral scholar at the Department of History/CESTA (Mellon/DHAsia program). She completed her PhD in History at the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Lyon (ENS Lyon), France, in June 2017. Her dissertation investigated the spatial history of advertising in modern Shanghai (1905–1949). She also led an interdisciplinary junior research lab devoted to digital humanities at the ENS Lyon in 2012–2014. Her research interests include the history of modern China, urban and social history, digital and spatial history, timelines, and epistemology.

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