Geographical Texts Research Articles

New Spain through the Lens of Spatial Humanities: The Case of the Bishopric of Michoacán

This article provides an overview of the development of spatial humanities in Mexico, focusing specifically on the Bishopric of Michoacán. This ecclesiastical and jurisdictional unit, established during the Viceroyalty of New Spain, has recently been examined through the lens of spatial humanities. Our review identifies that this approach, when combined with traditional historical methods, can be highly effective in advancing research on territorial reconfiguration processes involving both Spanish and Indigenous actors. Furthermore, we present two examples of geographical text analysis (GTA) applied to the Relaciones Geográficas of Michoacán. Building on this review and the examples, we aim to encourage researchers interested in Mexico's past to enhance the potential of early historical sources by extracting valuable information intertwined with the spatial data contained in these documents.

Biston betularia carbonaria Repopulating Maps with Climate Monsters

The monster appears in geographical texts throughout the ages as a ‘guardian of the border’ that defines the limits of the possible, inducing action or averting behavior and restricting movement for political or economic purposes. Through a philosophy that uses unorthodox means, I intend to present a climate monster by which, based on a possible imagery about the current climate crisis, an invitation for a change in our habits is produced. I propose that repopulating maps with situated imaginary monsters can deploy specific education of attention that invites focusing on concrete aspects of our surroundings. To do this I will present the mixed media art project Biston betularia carbonaria, an eco-distopia created in collaboration with the photographer Valeria Scrilatti.

The poetics of geographical knowledge: For a genealogy of geographical aesthetics in history and philosophy of geography

This short reflection on forty years of the UK's History and Philosophy of Geography group reflects on the poetics of geographical knowledge. Whilst histories of geography have diverged from philosophies of geography over recent years, the intervention proposes that a useful avenue of enquiry for future work is to develop fuller historical and philosophical accounts of the forms and poetics of geographical writing. This includes: philosophical reflection on form and space; historical studies of the varying forms, styles, and poetics of geographical knowledge; and active experiments with formal aspects of writing. Through a short reflection on the ethics of Jean-Marie Guyau (a sociologist whose naturalist and vitalist ethics had an important influence on anarchist geographers) the paper proposes an approach to the authority of geographical texts that is animated by an anomic ethos that is: genetic; affirmative; and generous.

Lexicographic (and Philological) Notes on the Expositio totius mundi

The anonymous Expositio totius mundi and its abridged and revised version, the Totius mundi descriptio, reproducing a geographical text (about 360 CE) translated from Greek, are difficult to date and very problematic for lexicographers, as shown by numerous examples from the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae, especially in its first volumes. The discussion on certain hapax legómena accepted among its entries (in particular calopetta, to be corrected in calopecta, and alethinus) helps to introduce some of the most interesting philological problems in the Expositio, e.g. concerning the reading alicem at § 47, in view of a new edition.

Melaka in the Arabic, Persian and Turkish sources

ABSTRACT This paper examines Melaka’s links with the Middle East during the long fifteenth century through the evidence of the sources written in Arabic, Persian and Turkish. These comprise Arabic navigational texts, Arabic inscriptions from Melaka itself, Persian geographical texts, and Turkish chronicles and administrative documents. Together, they show how the Melaka sultanate was perceived and remembered in the broader Islamic world.

A Hierarchy-Aware Geocoding Model Based on Cross-Attention within the Seq2Seq Framework

Geocoding converts unstructured geographic text into structured spatial data, which is crucial in fields such as urban planning, social media spatial analysis, and emergency response systems. Existing approaches predominantly model geocoding as a geographic grid classification task but struggle with the output space dimensionality explosion as the grid granularity increases. Furthermore, these methods generally overlook the inherent hierarchical structure of geographical texts and grids. In this paper, we propose a hierarchy-aware geocoding model based on cross-attention within the Seq2Seq framework, incorporating S2 geometry to model geocoding as a task for generating grid labels and predicting S2 tokens (labels of S2 grids) character-by-character. By incorporating a cross-attention mechanism into the decoder, the model dynamically perceives the address contexts at the hierarchical level that are most relevant to the current character prediction based on the input address text. Results show that the proposed model significantly outperforms previous approaches across multiple metrics, with a median and mean distance error of 41.46 m and 93.98 m, respectively. Furthermore, our method achieves superior results compared to others in regions with sparse data distribution, reducing the median and mean distance error by 16.27 m and 7.52 m, respectively, suggesting that our model has effectively mitigated the issue of insufficient learning in such regions.

The Third Coming of French Critical Geographies

<p>Critical translation between languages requires consideration not only of the meanings of words, but also of the translator's embeddedness in worlds which assign those meanings. Especially when working with geographic texts, reflecting on the places and spatial experiences that shape our understanding and use of words can be pertinent to creating authentic translations. In translating Yann Calbérac and Marianne Morange and Cécile Gintrac's texts that present an overview of French critical geographies, the translator reflects on ways her own history in French, American, and Canadian academic spaces effects her ability to transfer the nuances of French critical geographies to an Anglophone audience.</p>

지명과 행정구역 변화를 통해 본 지역의 역사지리적 변천

A historical geography on the region can be said to be an approach for regional research that integrates time and space, focusing on the current appearance of the region as well as the strata of older times. In this paper, I take a historical-geographical approach to the Cheongsong-gun region in Gyeongsangbuk-do by focusing on changes in ‘place name’ as a linguistic expression referring to an area divided by a certain boundary and in ‘administrative district’ as a representative spatial area that divides the region.
 First, the name ‘Cheongsong(靑松)’ can be found for the first time in the Annals of King Sejong. In 1423(5th year of King Sejong’s reign), the existing Cheongbo-gun(靑寶郡) and Songsaeng-hyeon(松生縣) were merged and ‘Cheongsong-gun(靑松郡)’ began to appear for the first time in Korean history. Naturally, our interests are bound to expand to Cheongbu-hyeon(靑鳧縣) and Jinbo-hyeon(眞寶縣) which are related to Cheongbo-gun, and Andeok-hyeon(安德 縣) which are related to Songsaeng-hyeon. Among these, in particular, Cheongbo-gun was elevated by integrating Jinbo-hyeon with Cheongbu-hyeon in 1418(the year of King Sejong’s accession to the throne), its name was changed to Cheongsong-gun through the separation of Jinbo-hyeon and incorporation of Songsaeng-hyeon in 1423, and Cheongsong-dohobu(靑松都護府) in 1459(the 5th year of King Sejo's reign). The promotion to Cheongbu-hyeon is deeply related to the locational specificity of Cheongbu-hyeon being the home of none other than King Sejong’s queen, Queen Soheon. From a current standpoint, it can be said to be a historical fact that requires attention in relation to the construction of place identity, securing historical and cultural contents, and storytelling in the Cheongsong region.
 Next, if we look at the process of integration and abolition of administrative districts and the transition of jurisdictions related to the name ‘Cheongsong’, we can easily understand how dynamically this region has changed. In other words, Cheongsong-gun in Gyeongsang-do, which first appeared in history in 1423, was centered around the middle part of the current Cheongsong-gun, with Jinbo-hyeon in the north and Andeok-hyeon in the southwest. At the time of the modern administrative district reorganization in 1895(the 32nd year of King Gojong’s reign), Cheongsong-gun in Andong-bu(安東府) was divided into two parts: Jinbo-gun in the north and Cheongsong-gun in the middle and southwest. Then, in 1914, Cheongsong-gun, Gyeongsangbuk-do, which was formed through merger and amalgamation by the Japanese Imperialism, incorporated the area corresponding to Jinbo-myeon and part of Pacheon-myeon in the northern part of the current Cheongsong-gun, forming its current form. In the future, regardless of the topic or object related to regional research, I hope that a historical-geographical approach to changes in ‘place names’ as geographical texts representing the region and ‘administrative districts’ as a spatial area that distinguishes regions can take precedence.

Evolution of the Concept of Geospatial Positionality: Conceptual and Term Dimension

The content of the general geographical concept of geospatial positionality (geopositionality) is revealed in the context of the relation of a single object / place with geospace, as well as the function of geoplace. Conceptual and terminological analysis of the concept is carried out in formal and semantic aspects. Using an explanatory dictionary of the modern Ukrainian language highlighted the meaning of placementtokens (position, location, positioning, neighborhood, proximity / remoteness) and the possibility of their use in geographical texts. Based on the study of scientific sources, object-centric, functional and integrated logical models of the concept of geopositionalityareelaborated. The directions of evolution of object-centric interpretation of the concept are revealed: clarification of the token of relation (sum of relation, set of relation, combination of relation, integral of relation; spatial, geographical, territorial, geospatial relations; spatial aspects of relation); determining the geopositionality of objects of ever smaller spatial coverage; the dominance of the ‘external’ approach to content disclosure; multiscale; potentiality. The functional model of the concept of geopositionality is created through the sequential deployment of the features, relations, potential, functions of geoplace. The semantic triangle of the concept of geopositionality of the object in the unity of its aspectsmeaning and conceptual content is developed. The main attributes of geopositionality (uniqueness / specificity, distance, potentiality / probability, hierarchy / multiscale, dynamism / historicity / variability) are highlighted, and their effect on different logical models are shown. The main directions of development of the concept of geopositionality are defined: nomination of features of geospatial relations of linear, areal, network geoobjects; nomination of dynamism of geopositionality of objects; positioning in relation to geospatial processes; mutual enrichment of semantically closest geopositional concepts; correct application of content and quantitative research methods for mathematical formalization and interpretation of geospatial relations of position and functioning. The classical, non-classical and modern stages in the development of the concepts of geospatial positionality are distinguished.

Intercity networks and urban performance: a geographical text mining approach

ABSTRACT Compared to the burgeoning literature discussing the importance of agglomeration externalities for development, limited attention has been given to network externalities. This is largely due to limited data availability. We propose a general measure to proxy city network externalities based on toponym co-occurrences that indicate the relatedness between cities. This paper extracts intercity relationships based on the co-occurrence of Chinese place names on 2.5 billion webpages. We calculate and map absolute and relative network positions, which we use to explain urban labour productivity. We found that a stronger embeddedness in networks of cities is significantly and positively associated with urban productivity. Smaller cities benefit comparatively more from being well embedded in city networks, suggesting that these relations can compensate for a lack of agglomeration externalities. We also compare the importance for urban performance of city network externalities vis-à-vis agglomeration externalities. City network externalities turn out to be more important in explaining urban performance than agglomeration externalities. This calls for new theorizing on a relational approach to urban and regional development. Rather than stimulating further concentration of urbanization, our findings suggest that fostering relationships between cities is a viable alternative urban development strategy. We conclude with suggestions for a research agenda that delves deeper into city network externalities.

Spatio-Temporal Relevance Classification from Geographic Texts Using Deep Learning

The growing proliferation of geographic information presents a substantial challenge to the traditional framework of a geographic information analysis and service. The dynamic integration and representation of geographic knowledge, such as triples, with spatio-temporal information play a crucial role in constructing a comprehensive spatio-temporal knowledge graph and facilitating the effective utilization of spatio-temporal big data for knowledge-driven service applications. The existing knowledge graph (or geographic knowledge graph) takes spatio-temporal as the attribute of entity, ignoring the role of spatio-temporal information for accurate retrieval of entity objects and adaptive expression of entity objects. This study approaches the correlation between geographic knowledge and spatio-temporal information as a text classification problem, with the aim of addressing the challenge of establishing meaningful connections among spatio-temporal data using advanced deep learning techniques. Specifically, we leverage Wikipedia as a valuable data source for collecting and filtering geographic texts. The Open Information Extraction (OpenIE) tool is employed to extract triples from each sentence, followed by manual annotation of the sentences’ spatio-temporal relevance. This process leads to the formation of quadruples (time relevance/space relevance) or quintuples (spatio-temporal relevance). Subsequently, a comprehensive spatio-temporal classification dataset is constructed for experiment verification. Ten prominent deep learning text classification models are then utilized to conduct experiments covering various aspects of time, space, and spatio-temporal relationships. The experimental results demonstrate that the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformer-Region-based Convolutional Neural Network (BERT-RCNN) model exhibits the highest performance among the evaluated models. Overall, this study establishes a foundation for future knowledge extraction endeavors.

Deep Mapping the Literary Lake District: A Geographical Text Analysis by Joanna E. Taylor and Ian N. Gregory (review)

Deep Mapping the Literary Lake District: A Geographical Text Analysis by Joanna E. Taylor and Ian N. Gregory (review)

Über die Landstraße entlang der Südküste des Schwarzen Meeres auf der Peutinger’s Karte: wie arbeitete der Kartograph

The article discusses the land road laid along the southern coast of the Black Sea from the Thracian Bosporus to Trapezunt on the Tabula Peutingeriana. In antiquity this region’s natural conditions (mountain ranges, descending to the sea, and wide rivers) stood in the way, so the path could not be laid there. Literary and archeological sources, milestones among them, do not confirm its existence. So, the article discusses possible causes and conditions which permitted the cartographer, who having used existing Greek periploi describing the coast, to “reconstruct” the possible land road. The article analyzes in detail the data of the Tabula Peutingeriana, which shows the path along the coast and the distances between “the stations”, these data being compared with the information of other sources (geographical texts), mostly with those of periploi describing the route of the ship close to the shore (the main source is “Periplus of the Pontus Euxinus” by Arrian). It has been found out that the distances between the stations correspond rather to the data of periploi; it means that the non-existent road was the cartographer’s invention, who supported on such literature. Also, the article mentions the absence of the road’s description in “The Antonine Itinerary”, where the descriptions of many ways coincide with the data of the Tabula Peutingeriana. It is noteworthy that this is not the first road along the sea coast on the Tabula which could not really exist. Thus, it shows an coastal road in Asia Minor between the Ionian city of Miletus and the Lycian city of Patara, led through Myndos, Knidos and Loryma. These cities’ geographical location does not assume the existence of the coastal road between them, but is based on the data of a periplus, possibly used by the cartographer. Also, the article draws a parallel with the path along the north-eastern coast of the Black Sea (now Abkhazia), where rivers and mountains impeded communication in antiquity and in the following centuries, until the twentieth century.

ISKUSTVENA NASPRAM SIMBOLIČKE GEOGRAFIJE: INOVACIJE MARKA POLA U OPISIMA ISTOKA U ODNOSU NA SREDNjOVEKOVNU DIDAKTIČKU KNjIŽEVNOST

This article aims to examine Marco Polo’s innovations of the descriptions of the Orient in his travelogue Le Devisement du monde (13th century). Unlike other geographical texts largely transmitted in the Middle Ages (Pierre de Beauvais’ Mappemonde, Jacques de Vitry’s Historia Orientalis, Goussouin de Metz’ Image du monde, La Lettre du Prêtre Jean) and the medieval bestiaries, Marco Polo’s travelogue (transcribed actually by Rustichello da Pisa in Franco-Ital- ian) manifests mostly its practical side: it informs the reader on the landscapes, climate, plants and animals in Asia, as well as the peoples who live there, their customs and the reign of the Great Khan, Kublai. Thus, this text clearly differs from the cosmographical tradition of sym- bolic representations, which the author questions, moreover, by the explicit deconstruction of some legends (the ones of the unicorn or the salamander, for instance).

Epitomes of Dacia: Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania in Early Modern English Travelogues

This essay examines the kaleidoscopic and abridged perspectives on three early modern principalities (Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania), whose lands are now part of modern-day Romania. I examine travelogues and geography texts describing these Eastern European territories written by Marco Polo (1579), Abraham Ortelius (1601; 1608), Nicolas de Nicolay (1585), Johannes Boemus (1611), Pierre d’Avity (1615), Francisco Guicciardini (1595), George Abbot (1599), Uberto Foglietta (1600), William Biddulph (1609), Richard Hakluyt (1599-1600), Fynes Moryson (1617), and Sir Henry Blount (1636), published in England in the period 1579-1636. The essay also offers brief incursions into the representations of these geographic spaces in a number of Shakespearean plays, such as The Merchant of Venice and Othello, as well as in Pericles, Prince of Tyre by Shakespeare and Wilkins. I argue that these Eastern European locations configure an erratic spatiality that conflates ancient place names with early modern ones, as they reconstruct a space-time continuum that is neither real nor totally imaginary. These territories represent real-and-fictional locations, shaping an ever-changing world of spatial networks reconstructed out of fragments of cultural geographic and ethnographic data. The travel and geographic narratives are marked by a particular kind of literariness, suggesting dissension, confusion, and political uncertainty to the early modern English imagination.

Geographies of Silence: The ‘Missing Chain’ in the Writing of Palestine’s Historical Geography

This paper provides a critical reading of (1) the ways in which Palestine’s cultural landscape and the indigenous people of Palestine have been represented in the eyes of Western and specifically European travelers and explorers in the 19th century; (2) how various such representations subsequently ‘filtered’ into Israeli geographical texts and writing, and were utilised by Israeli writers and others to (re) write a so-called ‘modern’, but distorted and incomplete historical geography of Palestine. The net result is that much of Palestine’s Arab landscape has been ‘de-historicised’, or as Keith Whitelam (1998 : 11) phrased it, has been ‘silenced’.

La représentation cartographique des ethnies à l'école: à la croisée du récit national multi-situé et des approches scientifiques?

"This article highlights the cartographic methods of ethnic group at school. The study uses the corpus of school geography (texts, maps, iconographic documents) analyzed on the basis of school practices and reference knowledges. The study shows school as an enunciating pole of the nation like scientific and political circles. In fact, School as an institution stands out from political and administrative fields, for ethnic group is built like a social body with a meaning. Moreover, even if school reproduces the essentialist logic the ethnic groups of Senegalese scholars, school shows with cartography some modes of representation that submit the analysis of the ethnic fact to learning objectives which deal with discovery, specification and description. Keywords: cartography, ethnic group, nation, education, geography. "

‘Victory or Siberia’: Imaginings of Siberia and the Memory of German POWs in the USSR

Abstract This article explores the memory of German prisoners of war (POWs) from the Second World War in the USSR. The article first identifies the trope of Siberian captivity, which it refutes using two digital humanities methods: geographic information system (GIS) mapping and text analysis. The article then raises a series of factors, covering both experiences, memoirs and novels of First World War captivity in Russia and also Nazi propaganda, to show a long-standing association between Siberia and German captivity in Russia and the Soviet Union. Finally, the article explores West German politics and memory culture to argue ultimately that the trope of Siberian captivity persisted as a result of West German anti-Communist policies and an attempt to displace blame and complicity for the war. While German memory changed between the 1950s and the present and although scholars have worked to expose many misrepresentations of the war that started in West Germany in the 1950s, this is the first study to examine the idea of Siberian captivity and its links to POWs in the USSR.

ԻՐՈՒՅԹՆԵՐԻ ՅՈՒՐԱՑՄԱՆ ԴԺՎԱՐՈՒԹՅՈՒՆՆԵՐԻ ՀԱՂԹԱՀԱՐՈՒՄԸ ԳԵՐՄԱՆԵՐԵՆԻ ՈՒՍՈՒՑՄԱՆ ԳՈՐԾԸՆԹԱՑՈՒՄ / OVERCOMING OF LEARNING REALIА IN THE PROCESS OF TEACHING GERMAN LANGUAGE

While studying German as a foreign language students often come across with elements, words, phenomena that are specific only to that language and do not exist in their mother tongue or in other languages they know. Such words are realia. This article explores the specifics of student learning difficulties and the modern teaching methods used to overcome them. A foreign language lesson is effective if it is based on an intercultural component. The study of information on geographical texts, fiction, historical reviews, customs and traditions of native speakers reveals the peculiarities of the national mentality, linguistic features of the given nation. Through them, learners develop the ability to read und understand native language literature, using information services correctly, reading the press, having dialogues and conversations. Methods, techniques and exercises suggested in the current article have been tested in Bryusov State University for teaching German as a 2nd and 3rd foreign language to learners at A1, A2, B1 levels.

Narrative Elements in Expository Texts

While the use of narrative elements in educational texts seems to be an adequate means to enhance students’ engagement and comprehension, we know little about how and to what extent these elements are used in the present-day educational practice. In this quantitative corpus-based analysis, we chart how and when narrative elements are used in current Dutch educational texts (N=999). While educational texts have traditionally been considered prime exemplars of expository texts, we show that the distinction between the expository and narrative genre is not that strict in the educational domain: prototypical narrative elements – particularized events, experiencing characters, and landscapes of consciousness – occur in 45% of the corpus’ texts. Their distribution varies between school subjects: while specific events, specific people, and their experiences are often at the heart of the to-be-learned information in history texts, narrativity is less present in the educational content of biology and geography texts. Instead publishers employ narrative-like strategies to make these texts more concrete and imaginable, such as the addition of fictitious characters and representative entities.