Mapping is a powerful tool to visualize space and data. However, working with historical data and maps is problematic as spaces change across time. Given this, the scope of this research is to create visual maps using GIS software that accurately represents the Baghdad-Basrah region of the Ottoman Empire in the late nineteenth century. Our key research question is: how can cholera data from primary sources in the nineteenth century be visualized through mapping? We gathered the data for this research from the diaries of Joseph Svoboda, a resident of the region who traveled frequently up and down the river system and recorded information about numbers of deaths and quarantines from cholera in the cities he passed. The method we used for mapping the data includes a comprehensive reading of the diaries currently being transcribed to assess which information is important for mapping purposes, including the location and time period of the event in question. We mapped the data using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), a software that is used to analyze and represent data through maps, to geocode locations and include cities and other features as they appeared in the nineteenth century. Anticipated results include an interactive choropleth and dot maps that are accurate to the specific time period and show deaths from cholera in specific locations over time. One key implication for further work would be a standardized way to map disease data from primary sources and to increase the number of individuals who use data visualization with historical data. Additionally, our mapped data can be used for other types of GIS analysis that may be of interest to those studying the history of cholera or historic epidemics.

This research explores 19th century Middle Eastern and European quarantine practices through the personal diaries of Joseph Mattias Svoboda, written in Iraq from 1862 to 1908. Joseph Mattias Svoboda’s diaries document a detailed account of daily life and information in the Basra and Baghdad regions of modern day Iraq. Joseph himself was from a prominent European family and worked for an English steamship company, traveling across Iraq during a time when cholera was prevalent and occasionally reached epidemic proportions. I used Joseph Svoboda’s notes as a basis to piece together common quarantine practices and procedures utilized in the 19th century by the Ottoman Empire. Using digital transcriptions of the diaries, I used data-mining techniques to extract references to cholera outbreaks, quarantine procedures, and numbers of people afflicted by disease before and after quarantines were put in place. Then, using contemporary European newspapers, medical journals, and historical records, I compared the Ottoman procedures to European quarantine practices. I examined the efficacy of quarantine procedures in both regions depending on the size of each given cholera outbreak. Ultimately, these early forms of public health governance may have influenced global trade patterns. Future projects stemming from this research could look into the influence of European public health practices on Ottoman medical thought, or the comparative role of physicians in the Ottoman Empire and in 19th century Europe. Regardless, hopefully this research encourages others to explore beyond the Eurocentric narrative of developing public health in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Svoboda Diaries Project works with personal diaries written at the turn of the 19th century, capturing over 40 years of the life, politics, and landscape of Ottoman Iraq. Written through the unique lens of a British steamship purser with a rich family history and connections in the area, these texts provide a unique insight into a locale on which there exists minimal literature for this time period. Undergraduate interns transcribe these diaries and develop open-source tools to make the texts available in a variety of formats. We are currently redesigning our website to better serve the needs of its various users, and our main question is: How do we realize the needs of prospective users when creating a digital platform for viewing historical manuscripts? Our current website is not sufficient in meeting the needs of the project’s diverse users: historians/researchers, contributors, and the general public. Therefore we intend to create an engaging and interactive user interface. At its core, the Svoboda Diaries comprise a personal narrative. We also intend to infuse a storytelling approach to present these unique documents in a larger political and historical context, and allow the user to explore them in different ways. We utilize a variety of user-centered research and design methods, such as conducting user interviews with domain experts and other interested individuals, creating prototypes, and conducting pilot usability sessions to refine the website.We anticipate that our website redesign will allow users greater access to explore the diaries. In addition, the redesign will draw attention to the most important aspect of the website: the diaries themselves, and the fascinating and valuable accounts within them.

One of the open questions in neutrino physics is the absolute mass scale of the neutrino, currently recognized as the only fundamental fermion whose mass scale is not fully known. The Project 8 neutrino experiment employs cyclotron radiation emission spectroscopy (CRES) to probe the neutrino mass spectrum, a method developed to measure electron energy by detecting cyclotron radiation through the acceleration of electrons confined in a magnetic (B) field. CRES data relies on energy precision which is directly related to B-field precision, therefore it is pertinent to monitor the time-varying field vector in which the experiment lies. Initial B-field surveys in our laboratory provided insight into the volatility of the local field environment, showing stray field fluctuations up to .5 microTesla produced by neighboring high field, high ramp-cycle magnets. This discovery motivated the implementation of the ambient magnetic field array measurement (AMFAM) system which monitors the local field environment and helps parse fluctuations in the B-field that could adversely affect the CRES data. The AMFAM system utilizes multiple triple-axis magnetometers placed around our laboratory for strategic B-field investigation. I worked on the development of the Arduino-based software to extract appropriate data from the magnetometers, as well as the hardware and wiring of the array system. I present my plans to execute data analysis and describe how long-term investigation of field conditions will benefit Project 8’s CRES data.

Joseph Mathia Svoboda, a European residing in Baghdad and working as a steamship officer, kept a detailed daily diary from 1861 to 1908, in which he recorded his trips on the Tigris, family events, and his medical and financial concerns, as well as each day’s weather. Working with the UW Svoboda Diaries Project, part of the Newbook Digital Texts Collective, I transcribe these diaries and help develop resources for their analysis and the promotion of digital humanities. Digital humanities work changes not only the literal, physical forms of texts but their literary forms as well, and digitizing a text such as a diary and opening it to public scholarship presents new questions about how we think about private writings. Literary scholarship on diaries addresses the unique psychological and philosophical aspects of keeping a diary and attempts to analyze its own position in relation to its object of study, as what is personal to a diarist is placed in plain view. Svoboda himself wrote in a largely impersonal, factual style, with little personal commentary, for instance, but scholars mine social and political sentiments from his choice of language or attention. In this project, I will consider the Svoboda diaries (focusing on three diaries written between 1897 and 1899) as textual objects and describe the transformations they have undergone since their writing, with a special focus on the transformation of the private nature of a diary. What do the diaries become as we study them? While digital humanities seeks faithfulness to the original contents of a text, drastic transformation of forms such as “making the private public” naturally opens those same contents to new uses, and understanding these changes is crucial to understanding the full extent of digital humanities scholarship.