The\nGrand Tour Project was first established by Giovanna Ceserani as one of the\nindividual case studies of the larger Mapping the Republic of Letters project,\nwhich investigated early networks connected by the transmission of postal\nletters. The Grand Tour Project continues this investigation, while mainly\nfocusing on travels to Italy in the eighteenth century. It remains based at\nStanford University and has involved several undergraduate and graduate\nresearchers over the years. Giovanna Ceserani began her work with the Mapping\nthe Republic project in 2008, and the Grand Tour project continues to expand\ntill this day with current contributors such as Celena Allen, Cody Leff, Thea\nde Armond, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The main purpose of the project is for it to be a scholarly resource, and the audience would largely be academics. According to Scheinfeldt\u2019s theory of the Digital Humanities, this project did not have a main argument or thesis that they wanted to test. Instead the main goal of the project is to widen the understanding of eighteenth-century travels to Italy and generate insights for research and further study. The researchers also hope that more information can be added, and the project can expand beyond the main text source provided by Ingamells to include more documented history and travelers to Italy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The project focuses on the Dictionary of British and Irish Travelers to Italy 1701-1800,\u00a0<\/em>which was compiled from the Brinsley Ford Archive in 1997 by John Ingamells, a professor at Yale University. As Posner would distinguish, this was the main source that was prepared for processing. Ingamells\u2019 work contains 5213 entries that are ordered alphabetically by name, and each traveler listed varies greatly by their journal detail and depth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ceserani\u2019s team started manually\nentering information about travelers\u2019 journeys and biographies into a database\nstructure. From there, this base material allowed them to discover a variety of\ndata visualizations. This led them to the second phase of the project, or the processing\nof the collected data. Researchers on the project are trying to make it as\ninteractive of a scholarly resource as possible, where people can ask specific\nquestions about travelers and their duration in different parts of Italy in an\naesthetically pleasing way. The work is ongoing, but they have established\nseveral different ways to interact with the data and examine various topics.\nFor example, there is a time-chart of the tourists travels that allows a viewer\nto examine the length of a person\u2019s stay in a region of Italy. There are other\ngraphs that link specific traveler\u2019s together according to various variables\nsuch as their educational background or their resources for funding. Most of\nthese visualizations were custom made by the Stanford team using an application\ncalled Palladio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In order to present these sources\nand tools to the world, the visualizations and project information is published\non Stanford University\u2019s website. Information\nabout this work was also published in several academic journals such as the American\nHistorical Review<\/em>. This project enables several \u201cscholarly primitives\u201d functional\nfor academics, such as discovery and insights into the Grand Tour and the\nexperiences of travelers to Italy. This website is also useful for comparing\nthe travels and experiences of different people according to their backgrounds\nand recorded historical information. Lastly, the visualizations help represent\nthese numbers in an understandable and functional way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This project has several strengths\nin its detail, longevity, and ongoing development of the technological\nresources. The staff members themselves acknowledge a few weaknesses that it is\nnot an \u201cexhaustive\u201d coverage of the historical period and that there are some\ninconsistencies in the presentation of information. More development on the\ndata visualizations and their searchability could make it an incredible\nacademic tool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Grand Tour Project was first established by Giovanna Ceserani as one of the individual case studies of the larger Mapping the Republic of Letters project, which investigated early networks connected by the transmission of postal letters. The Grand Tour Project continues this investigation, while mainly focusing on travels to Italy in the eighteenth century. 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