Group for Experimental Methods in Humanistic Research
at Columbia University

Johanna Drucker

Representation and Non-linear Chronologies

Johanna Drucker, Breslauer Professor of Bibliographical Studies in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA, will join us for a discussion with Laura Kurgan, Associate Professor of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation here at Columbia.

Professor Drucker outlines her concerns:

I am interested in modeling temporal relations without a standard Cartesian grid as the ground, finding a way to realize the unfulfilled project I began at [The University of] Virginia but couldn’t realize because we did not have the technical ability. The manuscripts of Eusebius’s chronologies, for instance, float their relative time scales so they don’t have to be reconciled within a single metric standard. Other aspects of humanistic representation of temporal experience are variable granularity and non-continuous temporality. The issues of non-linear, multi-directional, non-homogenous, and variably scaled temporalities are ones I have thought about for quite awhile.

This conversation will precede Johanna’s lecture later in the evening, “Should Humanists Use Information Visualizations?” at the Heyman Center for the Humanities.