Cultural Geography of Allen Island
The Cultural Geography of Allen Island is a digital humanities project, seeded in an American Studies course of the same name (AM226). Nine members of the project team visited the island to do geographical fieldwork—walking the island, taking photographs, and conducting landscape analyses. The group included seven student researchers (Namita Bhattacharya, Andrew DeStaebler, Greg Katz, Danny Lehman, Marla Montoya, Luke Rector, and Chang Zhang), Isabel Friedman (a student digital fellow from Digital Maine), Jason Parkhill (Director of Academic ITS), and Ben Lisle (Visiting Assistant Professor in American Studies). Photographer Heather Perry joined us to document the trip for Colby Communications.
The group makes its way from Port Clyde to Allen Island aboard the Archangel, a converted lobster boat named after George Weymouth’s ship that sheltered on the island in 1605.
We arrive at the island. The sail loft building (left) was originally built in the early 1800s in Port Clyde.
Sheep get their breakfast at sunrise, on the island’s northeastern corner.
In the 1800s, this landscape would have been crowded with small fishing shacks.
Jason Parkhill deftly returns a photographic drone to the earth’s surface, having spent a full day shooting footage for our multimedia project work. Cody the dog is uninterested.