Making maps

30 March 2026

This week we switch back to R and the analysis of data by diving into the use of spatial data and the creation of maps using R.

Reading

• Cameron Blevins, “Space, Nation, and the Triumph of Region: A View of the World from Houston,” Journal of American History 101, no. 1 (2014): 122–47, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jau184.
• Luca Scholz, “Deceptive Contiguity: The Polygon in Spatial History,” Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization 54, no. 3 (2019): 206–16, https://doi.org/10.3138/cart.54.3.2018-0018.
• Robin Lovelace, Jakub Nowosad, and Jannes Muenchow, Geocomputation with R (2nd Edition), Chapter 1.

Assignment

• Make an outline, mindmap, or drawing of what you might include in a project website.
• Start to develop content for a Quarto project website. They do not need to be fully developed at this point. You can work on your test website created in class or start your project website. It is up to you.
  • A basic home page
  • An about page
  • One or more content pages

Activities

• Quarto website overview and deploy to GitHub Pages.
• Discussion: Data visualization, mapping, and historical argument.
• A (hopefully) gentle introduction to mapping.
• Mapping data in R.

Spatial Digital History projects

• Mapping Inequality
• Visualizing Emancipation
• Slave Voyages
• Mapping the Republic of Letters
• Pleiades: gazetteer and graph of ancient places
• Ancient World Mapping Center
• World Historical Gazetteer

Packages to install

• sf: Simple features for R
• terra: Raster geographic data in R
• tidyterra: Integrate terra objects into the tidyverse and ggplot2.
• USAboundaries: historical boundaries from 1629 to 2000 for states and counties from the Newberry Library’s Atlas of Historical County Boundaries and historical city population data from Erik Steiner’s United States Historical City Populations, 1790–2010.
• rnaturalearth: Provides access to the Natural Earth vector data.
• tidygeocoder: Package to geocode locations using any of the many supported geocoding services.
• elevatr: An R package for accessing elevation data.
• leaflet: An R package for the Leaflet open-source JavaScript library for interactive maps.

Resources

See Resources: Mapping with R for more in depth discussion on resources for working with spatial data in R and in historical research.

• Robin Lovelace, Jakub Nowosad, and Jannes Muenchow, Geocomputation with R (2nd Edition).
  • Specifically, read over Chapter 2: Geographic data in R. This chapter provides an overview of vector and raster data in R, as well as coordinate reference systems.
  • Skim over the content of the other chapters in the book to see what may be of interest to you.
• Edzer Pebesma and Roger Bivand, Spatial Data Science: With Applications in R (2025), https://www.r-spatial.org/book.
• Kyle E. Walker, Analyzing US Census Data: Methods, Maps, and Models in R (CRC Press, 2023), https://walker-data.com/census-r/.
• Spatial Data Science with R and terra
• Kieran Healy, Data Visualization: A Practical Introduction, Chapter 7: Draw Maps.
• Martijn Tennekes and Jakub Nowosad, Spatial Data Visualization with tmap: A Practical Guide to Thematic Mapping in R (2025), https://tmap.geocompx.org.
• Jesse Sadler, An Exploration of Simple Features for R.
• Data Carpentries: Introduction to Geospatial Concepts.
• Data Carpentries: Introduction to Geospatial Raster and Vector Data with R.