“Rogues: Vancouver’s Contested Waterfront, 1897-1917”
Madison Heslop
DH Colloquium
Monday, 13 January, 2:00 pm
306 Smith Hall

An important part of DH (digital history/digital humanities) is being familiar with technology *before* entering the archives. When we know what tools are available, we are ready to recognize the potential of what we find and we can imagine new ways to analyze and present it.

Madison Heslop’s presentation is a case in point. Her DH Colloquium presentation “Rogues: Vancouver’s Contested Waterfront, 1897-1917” will detail the process of converting police records in the City of Vancouver Archives into a database and interactive digital map, with an aim to illuminate trends in the geography of crime in early-twentieth century Vancouver. As well as facilitating quantitative analysis of the transcribed police records, the project attempts to restore to these abstracted, codified ledgers their specific contexts of time and place and investigate how the streets of Vancouver’s waterfront district served as battlegrounds in the process of assigning meaning, prestige, and boundaries of belonging in the city. Madison Heslop is an advanced graduate student in History. She works under the supervision of Josh Reid.