Wilmington, DE – February 2014 – What could General Robert E. Lee see at Gettysburg, and how did his view of the battlefield influence his fateful decisions? Hagley Museum and Library will welcome Dr. Anne Kelly Knowles onFebruary 27 to kick off the 2014 Author Talk series. Dr. Knowles will show how she uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to give new perspectives on historical events. Join Hagley at 7 p.m. for “Gettysburg, the Holocaust, and Iron: Using Geographic Information Systems to Understand the Past.” Admission is free. If you plan to attend, please call (302) 658-2400, ext. 243, or email clockman@hagley.org. The lecture will be held in the Soda House auditorium. Use Hagley’s Buck Road East entrance off Route 100 in Wilmington, Delaware.
GIS is a computer application used to store, view, and analyze geographical information. According to Knowles, “…GIS offers an unprecedented range of tools to visualize historical information in its geographic context, examine it at different scales, interrogate its special patterns, and integrate material from many sources on the basis of shared location.” Dr. Knowles will discuss how she has used GIS to simulate the battlefield at Gettysburg, model concentration camp conditions at Auschwitz, and examine Pennsylvania’s coal and iron industry in the nineteenth century.
Dr. Knowles used the Lehigh Crane Iron Company Papers and Bethlehem Steel Corporation Collection at Hagley for her latest book, Mastering Iron: The Struggle to Modernize an American Industry (2013).
About Dr. Anne Kelly Knowles
Dr. Anne Kelly Knowles is an American geographer and a specialist in Historical GIS. She is a professor of geography at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont. She received her MA and PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Knowles is author of Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS are Changing Historical Scholarship (2008), "Digital Maps Are Giving Scholars the Historical Lay of the Land" in The New York Times (June 2011), and "Looking at the Battle of Gettysburg Through Robert E. Lee's Eyes" in Smithsonian Magazine (December 2012).
About Hagley Museum and Library
At Hagley, we invite people of all ages to investigate and experience the unfolding history of American business, technology, and innovation, and its impact on the world, from our home at the historic DuPont powder yards on the banks of the Brandywine.
For more information, call (302) 658-2400 weekdays