Collaborative student-faculty research projects centered in the locale of residential liberal arts colleges let students engage in a variety of learning experiences and high impact practices including undergraduate research, civic engagement, and multidisciplinary approaches to complex problems. Students at Bucknell University, as part of the Stories of the Susquehanna Valley Project, gathered stories from the Marcellus Shale region in the Susquehanna watershed of how the boom in natural gas drilling is transforming communities and cultural landscapes. This seminar will explore the possibilities digital humanities offers students to incorporate technologies such as ArcGIS and Google Earth into storytelling of their environment. Focusing on the full length of the Susquehanna River, Katherine Faull, Professor of German and Humanities and Alf Siewers, Associate Professor of English at Bucknell University, will provide examples and lead discussion of how students’ digital learning may foster cooperation between universities, public agencies (local, regional and national) and NGOs in successful efforts to raise environmental awareness.

1. Stories of the Susquehanna:
Digital Humanities, Spatial Thinking, and
Telling the historia of the Environment
Katherine Faull, Professor of German and the
Humanities
Alf Kentigern Siewers, Associate Professor of
English and Affiliated Faculty Member in
Environmental Studies
Bucknell University
NITLE Seminar, October 9, 2012

2. Stories of the Susquehanna
• Multiyear, multi-institutional collaborative
student/faculty project
• Goal—
– produce traditional print medium book series that
highlights the narratives of place in the
Susquehanna
– Produce multimedia, interactive sites that
complement the print series and also act as stand-
alone resources for K-12 and college curricula

3. The problem: How to • Civic engagement
engage students in local – Summer Writers Institute
geo-history (2009)
• Chesapeake Conservancy—
Students commonly write history
as:
John Smith Trail Connector
Trail (2009-12)
A linear temporal narrative
imposed on complex • Digital storytelling
signifying grids
– Stories from Marcellus Shale
They employ a univocal (2010)
narrative voice
• Mellon foundation grant
And thus provide a single (2012)
perspective
• Interdisciplinary course (IP)
– 2011, 2012

4. Potential of Digital Humanities
• Realization that “The extra dimensions and
movements possible in spatial representations
compared to linear temporality are crucial in
opening up the cartographic imagination to
multi-focal, multi-causal, and non-narrative
modes of historical representation.”
• (Katherine Hayles, p. 50)

5. Summer Writers Institute
(2009)

6. John Smith Trail
Sponsored by the Chesapeake
Conservancy, this was a multi-year
research project that involved
undergraduate and graduate students,
faculty, and local agencies

9. Smith’s 1612 map--detail
Question remains as to where these locations are today and whether
they can even be found as John Smith’s map is not isomorphic, that is is
not drawn to scale to represent landscape and location

10. Students georectified Smith’s
map according to different
scholarly interpretations
1. Clark and Eschleman place all
Smith’s sites south of Harrisburg:
Sasquesahanough at
Washington Boro,
Attaock around York,
Quadroque near Middletown,
Tesinigh around Lebanon,
Utchowig around Harrisburg,
Cepowig “at the head of
Willowby’s River” (Bush River) in
Maryland
[produces geographical error of
between 10-30 miles]
from: H. Frank Eshleman, Lancaster County
Indians: Annals of the Susquehannocks and Other
Indian Tribes of the Susquehanna Territory from
About the Year 1500 to 1763, the Date of their
Extinction (Lititz, Pa.: Express Printing Co., 1909),
12-13.

11. Smith’s map geo-rectified
according to Guss and
Donehoo
Guss and Donehoo suggest a more northern
location for the Susquehannock villages:
• Attaock in the region of the Juniata river
• Quadroque at the confluence at Sunbury
• Tesinigh on the North Branch in the
region of Wyoming
• Utchowig on the West Branch in the
vicinity of Lock Haven
Taking the “Northern view” produces
geographical error of up to 30 miles again
Cepowig is off the map, however.
From: A.L. Guss, Early Indian History on the Susquehanna (Harrisburg, Pa.:
Lane S. Hart, Printer, 1883), 5-6.
Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico,
Bulletin 30, Part 2, edited by Frederick Webb
Hodge (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing
Office, 1910), 655.
George P. Donehoo, A History of the Indian
Villages and Place Names in Pennsylvania,
(Lewisburg, Pa.: Wennawoods Publishing, 1999),
142.

12. The John Smith Trail
Lower Susquehanna River (Havre de
Grace –Harrisburg)
Main Branch (Harrisburg-Sunbury)
West Branch (Sunbury-Lock Haven)
North Branch (Sunbury-Cooperstown)

13. Washington Borough Sites
Emily Bitely ’11 ArcMap and GIS

14. Primary Resources:
 18th – 19th Century colonial
surveys designating property
boundaries with “witness markers”
(e.g. trees, posts, and stones)
 18th – 19th Century accounts by
explorers such as botanists John
Bartram & Frederick Pursh provide
additional descriptions of contact-
era landscapes
 Details of manmade & natural
features from unpublished 18th
Century manuscript maps
Completed areas of focus:
 Washington Boro, Sunbury
confluence, Tioga, and the
Wyoming Valley
Emily Bitely ‘11

15. Incorporating Modern GIS Data
Layers:
 American Indian sites,
Wallace’s Indian Paths, and
streams
 Georeferenced German
North Branch map
 Oil and Gas Wells (DEP GIS
dataset, 2006) categorized by
site status—Active, Inactive,
Abandoned, Proposed but
Never Materialized

16. Mapping Moravians and Native
Americans
• Faull’s research into Moravian and Native
peoples’ interactions in the 18th century
• Initially supported by NEH Collaborative Research
grant;
• Development of student expertise
– Chesapeake Conservancy summer grants to students
– Degenstein Foundation grants for student stipends for
summer research
– John Ben Snow Foundation grant for summer writers’
workshop

17. Fenimore Cooper and Joseph Priestley
• Siewers led student research on mapping of late
18th c./early 19th c. literature of region
• Connections with James Fenimore Cooper
• Landholdings of Joseph Priestley
• Grants from John Ben Snow foundation, Bucknell
Scadden fellowship, Degenstein foundation and
Mellon foundation to support student summer
research
• Students using GIS and ArcMap, and Google Earth

18. Map of Susan Fenimore Cooper’s
world

19. Teaching new courses: learning new
skills
• Importance of a LONG TERM mentor/mentee
relationship—e.g. Presidential Fellow, Steffany
Meredyk
• Allows for collaborative learning of new skills
• Allows for complementary learning and
application of skills
• Student skills transferable between GIS,
History, Humanities, English, Environmental
Studies courses

20. Historical GIS mapping

23. Google Earth mapping
Bethany Dunn ‘14

24. Conclusions
• What are we learning/ teaching?
– New ways of thinking about representation
– -New ways of studying and experiencing
landscape as symbolic narrative
– New ways of thinking about cause/effect
relationships
– New ways of thinking about dominant/subaltern
power relationships and their representations
– Valuable transferable skills

25. Bibliography
1. Environmental phenomenology, layers of stories as
landscape:
• The Fate of Place, Edward Casey (California UP 1998)
• The Embers and the Stars, Erazim Kohák (Chicago UP,
1987)
• “Cyberpunks in Cyberspace,” Paul Edwards in Cultures
of Computing, ed. Susan Star (Keele UP, 1995)
• “Ecosemiotics,” Winfried Nöth, Sign System Studies,
vol. 26 (1998)
– (and other articles online that can be found by Googling
the term)

26. Bibliography (cont.)
2. Cultural Landscape and mapping
• Radical Hope, Jonathan Lear (Harvard, 2006)
• Margaret Wickins Pearce and Renée Pualani
Louis, “Mapping Indigenous Depth of Place”
American Indian Culture and Research Journal,
(2008)