Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Inside the History Lab

Inside the History Lab The cover of the December issue of the AHR features one of more than sixty visual narratives prepared by W. E. B. Du Bois and his collaborators for the 1900 Paris Exposition. These individual panels transformed data sets collected by Du Bois’s sociological laboratory at Atlanta University into arresting visual images that were at the center of the Exposition des Nègres d’Amerique in Paris. They were designed by Du Bois and his team to illustrate the progress made by Black Americans since emancipation. The infographic on the AHR cover shows the increasing “assessed value of household and kitchen furniture owned by Georgia Negros.” Others charted land and property ownership, mortality, literacy, crime, education, income, and expenditures. They took a variety of innovative visual forms. Some were bar and line graphs in bright primary colors; others were illustrated maps and diagrams; and some, like the visualization on the AHR cover, included flowing spirals in gouache and watercolor. All the panels were strikingly presented, and often quite beautiful. Today we would call them data visualizations, and in fact they anticipate the growing use of visual modes through which many historians seek to convey their arguments about the past. As early forms http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The American Historical Review Oxford University Press

Inside the History Lab

Bradley, Mark Philip
The American Historical Review , Volume 127 (4): 3 – Jan 24, 2023
Download PDF
4 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/oxford-university-press/inside-the-history-lab-LERbPOm05J
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com
ISSN
0002-8762
eISSN
1937-5239
DOI
10.1093/ahr/rhac460
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The cover of the December issue of the AHR features one of more than sixty visual narratives prepared by W. E. B. Du Bois and his collaborators for the 1900 Paris Exposition. These individual panels transformed data sets collected by Du Bois’s sociological laboratory at Atlanta University into arresting visual images that were at the center of the Exposition des Nègres d’Amerique in Paris. They were designed by Du Bois and his team to illustrate the progress made by Black Americans since emancipation. The infographic on the AHR cover shows the increasing “assessed value of household and kitchen furniture owned by Georgia Negros.” Others charted land and property ownership, mortality, literacy, crime, education, income, and expenditures. They took a variety of innovative visual forms. Some were bar and line graphs in bright primary colors; others were illustrated maps and diagrams; and some, like the visualization on the AHR cover, included flowing spirals in gouache and watercolor. All the panels were strikingly presented, and often quite beautiful. Today we would call them data visualizations, and in fact they anticipate the growing use of visual modes through which many historians seek to convey their arguments about the past. As early forms

Journal

The American Historical Review – Oxford University Press

Published: Jan 24, 2023

There are no references for this article.