Catherine Gibson
Biographic Data
| ID | 3596273 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Catherine Gibson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Catherine |
| FAMILY NAME | Gibson |
| SIGNATURE | GIBSON C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Tartu |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8564-1223 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 9 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Imperial mirrors
The naming of cityscapes has never been a disinterested or straightforward affair. This article, which introduces the special issue on multifunctional urban toponymy in the Romanov Empire, opens by providing an overview of recent developments in critical place-name studies and bringing this field into dialogue with the historiography of the empire. It then delineates the main waves of toponymic changes in the empire from the eighteenth to the ear…
Lawful naming and toponymic resistance
The 1893 Dorpat-to-Iur′ev (present-day Tartu) renaming law marks a key moment in the Romanov imperial government’s efforts to de-Germanize and Russify the Baltic provinces. This article brings legal perspectives to critical place-name studies by examining how the Romanov Empire used law to regulate and exert control over naming practices, and how local inhabitants leveraged their legal knowledge to spot ambiguities, exploit loopholes and defend n…
Mapping, Connectivity, and the Making of European Empires
Horizontal Threads
This article outlines an emerging approach in the spatial history of the Romanov empire. Similar to other empires of the long nineteenth century, the Romanov empire has traditionally been understood as a spoked wheel, whose vertical axes of power and lines of communication flowed between the metropolitan "core" and the "peripheries." We argue for the need to move beyond this well-worn image of the empire as a vertical structure of "center-periphe…
Renegotiating Estonia’s marginality in the imagined geography of Europe
Central and Eastern Europe leadership responses to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 have not only contributed to power shifts within European politics, but also to attempts to discursively reinterpret the region's imagined geography. Based on a content analysis of over 500 Tweets related by Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas in the first year of the war, we examine how Kallas has endeavoured to reconfigure Estonia's margi…
From the Holy Roman Empire to the Land of the Tsars
Attuning to Emotions in the History of Border-Making
Borders are key sites for the amplification of emotions, yet historians have rarely made emotions into a focal point for studies of boundary-making processes. This article sets out fragmentary evidence for how to read across a fuller array of sources that move us beyond technocratic understandings of boundary commissions to highlight the range of emotional interactions which occurred between boundary commissioners and local populations. It draws …
Post-War Ethnic Boundary-Mapping from Above and Below
The chapter presents a multi-scalar account of the uses of ethnographic mapping to negotiate the Estonian-Latvian state border in the aftermath of the First World War. Focusing on the period between 1919-1920, it examines the interactions between Estonian and Latvian government representatives, the Estonian-Latvian Boundary Commission, and the efforts of local inhabitants to influence the outcome of the bordering process. The chapter offers a nov…
Epilogue
The epilogue provides a summary of the key arguments of the book: that geographically and socially diverse populations engaged in ethnographic mapmaking in the Russian Empire to explore a range of imperial, national, local, and global ways of thinking about the relationship between nationhood and territory; the content, appearance, and circulation of ethnographic maps was heavily influenced by the institutions, patrons, funders, printers, and pub…
The Baltic Question in Cartographic Imagination
This chapter examines the argumentative turn in ethnographic mapping in the second half of the nineteenth century which saw maps being used as tools of social inquiry. It examines the Baltic Question as an example of one of the many social, political, economic, and national ‘questions’ that crystallised in intellectual consciousness and gained prominence in the second half of the nineteenth century. Imperial administrators and intellectuals debat…
Geographies of Nationhood
Geographies of Nationhood examines the meteoric rise of ethnographic mapmaking in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a form of visual and material culture that gave expression to territorialised visions of nationhood. In the Russian Empire’s Baltic provinces, the development of ethnographic cartography, as part of the broader field of statistical data visualisation, progressively became a tool that lent legitimacy and an experiential…
Apostasy in the Baltic Provinces
There has been a rich body of scholarship in recent years that challenges the accepted idea of the spread of nationalist thinking in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by highlighting the flexible, ambiguous, opportunistic or instrumental ways in which the inhabitants of central and eastern Europe engaged with ideas about nationhood. However, so far these discussions of 'national indifference' have not extensively examined the cros…
Creating an Ethnographic Atlas of European Russia as Reflected in Peter von Köppen’s Correspondence with the Academy of Sciences
In the mid-nineteenth century, the development of ethnographic cartography was mostly driven by issues related to the classification and territorial distribution of ethnic groups. However, in the course of this work, cartographers, ethnographers, and statisticians faced economic and material challenges, which have often been overlooked in the scholarship. This article examines the ‘mapping processes’ (М. Edney) of the 1840s through an analysis of…
Licht und Luft des Imperiums
Mapmaking in the home and printing house
The Rise and Fall of Belarusian Nationalism, 1906–1931, written by Rudling, Per Anders
Shading, lines, colors
This article explores the role of maps in the construction and development of ethnographic taxonomies in the mid-century Russian Empire. A close reading of two ethnographic maps of “European Russia” produced by members of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, Petr Keppen (1851) and Aleksander Rittikh (1875), is used to shine a spotlight on the cartographical methods and techniques (lines, shading, color, hatching, legends, text, etc.) employ…
The Palgrave Handbook of Slavic Languages, Identities and Borders
This book analyzes the creation of languages across the Slavophone areas of the world and their deployment for political projects and identity building, mainly after 1989. It offers perspectives from
A History of Belarus
Gruomota
Gruomota: the influence of politics and nationalism on the development of written Latgalian in the long nineteenth century (1772–1918)Latgale, the southeast region of Latvia, has a distinct ethnoregional identity largely due to the wide- spread use of the Latgalian language/dialect. The status of Latgalian as a language/dialect is highly politicised in Latvia today, yet this is not only a twenty-first century phenomenon. Since its inception as a …
Geographies of Nationhood
Geographies of Nationhood examines the meteoric rise of ethnographic mapmaking in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a form of visual and material culture that gave expression to territorialised visions of nationhood. In the Russian Empire’s Baltic provinces, the development of ethnographic cartography, as part of the broader field of statistical data visualisation, progressively became a tool that lent legitimacy and an experiential…
Mapmaking in the home and printing house
Renegotiating Estonia’s marginality in the imagined geography of Europe
Central and Eastern Europe leadership responses to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 have not only contributed to power shifts within European politics, but also to attempts to discursively reinterpret the region's imagined geography. Based on a content analysis of over 500 Tweets related by Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas in the first year of the war, we examine how Kallas has endeavoured to reconfigure Estonia's margi…
Gruomota
Gruomota: the influence of politics and nationalism on the development of written Latgalian in the long nineteenth century (1772–1918)Latgale, the southeast region of Latvia, has a distinct ethnoregional identity largely due to the wide- spread use of the Latgalian language/dialect. The status of Latgalian as a language/dialect is highly politicised in Latvia today, yet this is not only a twenty-first century phenomenon. Since its inception as a …
The Palgrave Handbook of Slavic Languages, Identities and Borders
This book analyzes the creation of languages across the Slavophone areas of the world and their deployment for political projects and identity building, mainly after 1989. It offers perspectives from
A History of Belarus
The Rise and Fall of Belarusian Nationalism, 1906–1931, written by Rudling, Per Anders
Shading, lines, colors
This article explores the role of maps in the construction and development of ethnographic taxonomies in the mid-century Russian Empire. A close reading of two ethnographic maps of “European Russia” produced by members of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, Petr Keppen (1851) and Aleksander Rittikh (1875), is used to shine a spotlight on the cartographical methods and techniques (lines, shading, color, hatching, legends, text, etc.) employ…
Licht und Luft des Imperiums
Mapmaking in the home and printing house
Creating an Ethnographic Atlas of European Russia as Reflected in Peter von Köppen’s Correspondence with the Academy of Sciences
In the mid-nineteenth century, the development of ethnographic cartography was mostly driven by issues related to the classification and territorial distribution of ethnic groups. However, in the course of this work, cartographers, ethnographers, and statisticians faced economic and material challenges, which have often been overlooked in the scholarship. This article examines the ‘mapping processes’ (М. Edney) of the 1840s through an analysis of…
Post-War Ethnic Boundary-Mapping from Above and Below
The chapter presents a multi-scalar account of the uses of ethnographic mapping to negotiate the Estonian-Latvian state border in the aftermath of the First World War. Focusing on the period between 1919-1920, it examines the interactions between Estonian and Latvian government representatives, the Estonian-Latvian Boundary Commission, and the efforts of local inhabitants to influence the outcome of the bordering process. The chapter offers a nov…
Epilogue
The epilogue provides a summary of the key arguments of the book: that geographically and socially diverse populations engaged in ethnographic mapmaking in the Russian Empire to explore a range of imperial, national, local, and global ways of thinking about the relationship between nationhood and territory; the content, appearance, and circulation of ethnographic maps was heavily influenced by the institutions, patrons, funders, printers, and pub…
The Baltic Question in Cartographic Imagination
This chapter examines the argumentative turn in ethnographic mapping in the second half of the nineteenth century which saw maps being used as tools of social inquiry. It examines the Baltic Question as an example of one of the many social, political, economic, and national ‘questions’ that crystallised in intellectual consciousness and gained prominence in the second half of the nineteenth century. Imperial administrators and intellectuals debat…
Geographies of Nationhood
Geographies of Nationhood examines the meteoric rise of ethnographic mapmaking in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a form of visual and material culture that gave expression to territorialised visions of nationhood. In the Russian Empire’s Baltic provinces, the development of ethnographic cartography, as part of the broader field of statistical data visualisation, progressively became a tool that lent legitimacy and an experiential…
Apostasy in the Baltic Provinces
There has been a rich body of scholarship in recent years that challenges the accepted idea of the spread of nationalist thinking in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by highlighting the flexible, ambiguous, opportunistic or instrumental ways in which the inhabitants of central and eastern Europe engaged with ideas about nationhood. However, so far these discussions of 'national indifference' have not extensively examined the cros…
From the Holy Roman Empire to the Land of the Tsars
Attuning to Emotions in the History of Border-Making
Borders are key sites for the amplification of emotions, yet historians have rarely made emotions into a focal point for studies of boundary-making processes. This article sets out fragmentary evidence for how to read across a fuller array of sources that move us beyond technocratic understandings of boundary commissions to highlight the range of emotional interactions which occurred between boundary commissioners and local populations. It draws …
Renegotiating Estonia’s marginality in the imagined geography of Europe
Central and Eastern Europe leadership responses to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 have not only contributed to power shifts within European politics, but also to attempts to discursively reinterpret the region's imagined geography. Based on a content analysis of over 500 Tweets related by Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas in the first year of the war, we examine how Kallas has endeavoured to reconfigure Estonia's margi…
Imperial mirrors
The naming of cityscapes has never been a disinterested or straightforward affair. This article, which introduces the special issue on multifunctional urban toponymy in the Romanov Empire, opens by providing an overview of recent developments in critical place-name studies and bringing this field into dialogue with the historiography of the empire. It then delineates the main waves of toponymic changes in the empire from the eighteenth to the ear…
Lawful naming and toponymic resistance
The 1893 Dorpat-to-Iur′ev (present-day Tartu) renaming law marks a key moment in the Romanov imperial government’s efforts to de-Germanize and Russify the Baltic provinces. This article brings legal perspectives to critical place-name studies by examining how the Romanov Empire used law to regulate and exert control over naming practices, and how local inhabitants leveraged their legal knowledge to spot ambiguities, exploit loopholes and defend n…
Mapping, Connectivity, and the Making of European Empires
Horizontal Threads
This article outlines an emerging approach in the spatial history of the Romanov empire. Similar to other empires of the long nineteenth century, the Romanov empire has traditionally been understood as a spoked wheel, whose vertical axes of power and lines of communication flowed between the metropolitan "core" and the "peripheries." We argue for the need to move beyond this well-worn image of the empire as a vertical structure of "center-periphe…
History (14 works) · Political science (13 works) · Empire (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Geography (9 works) · Archaeology (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Art (7 works) · Ancient history (6 works)