ABSTRACT
The historian who wishes to visualize data faces a number of challenges. In the first place, most historians would deny that they work with “data.” As Christof Schoech has written,
Most of my colleagues in literary and cultural studies would not necessarily speak of their objects of study as “data.” If you ask them what it is they are studying, they would rather speak of books, paintings and movies; of drama and crime fiction, of still lives and action painting; of German expressionist movies and romantic comedy. They would mention Denis Diderot or Toni Morrison, Chardin or Jackson Pollock, Fritz Lang or Diane Keaton. Maybe they would talk about what they are studying as texts, images, and sounds. But rarely would they consider their objects of study to be “data.”
