Mapping the Great Dismal Swamp: a conversation with Christy Hyman & Noah Angell
Tuesday 6 June 2016, 7-9pm
FREE, booking essential
Res. are pleased to be hosting researcher Christy Hyman and artist Noah Angell in conversation regarding Hyman’s current work on the landscapes experienced by runaways from enslavement and exploitative labour on the East Coast of the United States from 1805-1840. The event will focus upon the technological methodology of Hyman’s map-making, and the underlying significance held by the Great Dismal Swamp.
Hyman’s current research works towards mapping the probable paths of those who escaped enslavement and sought a way north, hid or took refuge, sometimes for years at a time in the Great Dismal Swamp. This area, located in the coastal region connecting Virginia and North Carolina, is sometimes known as the Maritime Underground Railroad as many of those living in the swamp had worked in the water transport trade, their navigational skill and literacy enabling their efforts to flee. Hyman’s mappings correlate first hand accounts, topographical information gleaned from archival maps and myriad documentary sources to reconstruct the possibility of liberation that may have been held at the time.
Christy Hyman is a spatial humanist based in Lincoln, Nebraska and has shared her work at Stanford University Libraries, the Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Kansas and Vanderbilt University Center for Digital Humanities. She is a current PhD candidate at the University of Nebraska Lincoln in the department of History.
Noah Angell is a London-based artist, recent exhibitions and events include Shooting the Shooters at Birkbeck Institute of Moving Image, That Celestial Shore at CCA Derry-Londonderry and Ghost Stories of the British Museum at Rib, Rotterdam.
The event is free but booking is essential
For further information contact@beingres.
Image credit: Visualisation of road network in Bertie County, North Carolina by Christy Hyman, 2017