Bringing Literature and Literary Geographies into Geospatial Research Teams

In this brief Thinking Space paper, we suggest that engaging with literature and literary geographies within geospatial research teams can aid in humanizing the contexts of such projects. To demonstrate this, we describe how we have engaged with literature in the first stage of a geospatial project that has a goal of developing mapping and modeling techniques for locating inactive acequias in New Mexico, U.S. Acequias are community-based irrigation systems with deep cultural importance to the landscapes and communities of New Mexico. Incorporating the reading and discussion of poetry, nonfiction, film, and literary studies into our research team meetings has helped deepen, texture, and humanize our understanding of the contexts around the geospatial project. Based on our experience, we make two modest proposals for expanding the collaborative reach of literary geographies within the broad tent of geography.