Chris Bunin, "Mapping the American Experience" | National Humanities Center

Education Programs

Chris Bunin, "Mapping the American Experience"

November 23, 2016


The use of geospatial technologies allows the interactions of place, space, time, and scale to be more obvious to teachers and students. Often there is an over-emphasis on the chronology of historical events without a strong consideration for their connections to geography. Geospatial technologies allow students to raise the critical ability to answer not only the important question of “where?” but also “why there?” With an emphasis on inquiry-based teaching and learning, Chris Bunin provides insights on the ways that GIS tools contribute to a deeper understanding of the humanities.

Chris Bunin
Chris Bunin, Albemarle High School, Charlottesville, VA

Chris Bunin is a teacher of A.P. Human Geography, World History, and Geospatial Technologies at Albemarle High School in Charlottesville, Virginia. During the past decade he has collaborated on projects focused on leveraging geospatial technologies and geo-literacy in the classroom. These include: “The Virginia Experiment” and “America on the World Stage” Teaching American History Projects; the iSTEM Teacher Scholars Program: An Applied Geospatial Curriculum for Middle Schools; “Transatlantic Teacher Scholars: Change Over Time and Place in the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery”; Esri’s GeoInquiries for US History and Human Geography; the U.S. Census Bureau’s Statistics in Schools Program; and the award winning book Jamestown to Appomattox: Mapping U.S. History Using GIS (Carte Diem Press). Chris is also assistant professor of Geography at Piedmont Virginia Community College and a member of the Virginia Geographic Alliance Steering Committee.