Visualization and Power: Learning from the Past to Design the Future We Need

About the Talk: 

This talk looks back over two hundred years in order to show how data visualization was—and remains—a tremendous form of power. Beginning with two historical examples, the line graphs of British trade data included in William Playfair’s Commercial and Political Atlas (1786) and "Description of a Slave Ship" (1789), created and circulated by a group of British antislavery activists, I will explain how the act of visualizing data has always involved more than just turning numbers into visual form. What forms of information are captured by data? Whose knowledge does the data represent? What experience does the designer bring to the visualization process? For what purposes, and for whose goals? By describing how my project team has explored these questions in our collaborative book and website, Data by Design (dataxdesign.io) (MIT Press, 2026),

I will show how the eighteenth century—and those who study it—continue to hold lessons for those who view and design data visualizations today. 

About the Speaker: 

Lauren Klein is Professor of Data & Decision Sciences and English at Emory University, where she also directs the Digital Humanities Lab and the Atlanta Interdisciplinary AI Network. Her research brings together computational and critical methods to explore questions of gender, race, and justice, both in early America and today. Klein is the author (with Catherine D’Ignazio) of the award-winning Data Feminism (MIT Press, 2020), and the editor (with Matthew K. Gold) of Debates in the Digital Humanities (Univ. of Minnesota Press), among other books and papers. Her next book, Data by Design: Visualization and Power from Abolition to the Dawn of Data Science (MIT Press), will be out in October 2026.

About the Workshop: 

Graduate students and faculty are welcome to attend a casual conversation with Lauren Klein at the Premodern Workshop on Friday, October 2, 10-11 am in Heller 1210. Tea, coffee, and breakfast treats will be provided.

Cosponsors

This event is cosponsored by the Department of History and the Department of English.