News & Notes: December 2021 – March 2022

Hi everyone, I hope your 2021’s are wrapping up well! Thank you to all the interesting presenters at WAML’s 2021 annual conference. It was a great group, and I learned so much!

If you have any events, conferences, or cool map links, feel free to reach out to me at browngl@uwm.edu. -Georgia Brown

Lectures:

December 9, 2021 – USA (Online)

The Boston, California, Chicago, New York, Philip Lee Phillips, Rocky Mountain, Texas, and Washington Map Societies are offering a virtual lecture via Zoom . Anyone interested in participating in the meeting must RSVP to John Docktor at washmap(at)gmail.com in order to receive the meeting ID and passcode. Meeting will start at 7:00 PM Eastern Time, 6:00 PM Central Time, 5:00 PM Mountain Time, and 4:00 PM Pacific Time. Peter A. Cowdrey, Jr. (Archivist, Cognetta Family Trust Collection of Historic Florida Maps) will discuss The Florida Origins of North American Cartography. From tiny, isolated points on the Florida peninsula, the Spanish claim to “La Florida” grew so that by the late 16th century it stretched from the Florida Keys to Virginia and from the Atlantic Coast to the Trans-Mississippi West. Map archivist Peter A. Cowdrey, Jr. will guide participants on an exploration of the beginnings of North American cartography as well as detail the growth and diminution of Spanish Florida. Utilizing the impressive collection of Florida maps spanning multiple centuries from the Cognetta Family Trust Collection, this presentation will feature maps from the early 16th century to the early 1800s.

December 9, 2021 – London (Online)

The Thirty-First Series of “Maps and Society Lectures” in the history of cartography are convened by Catherine Delano-Smith (Institute of Historical Research), Tony Campbell (formerly Map Library, British Library), Peter Barber (Visiting Fellow, History, King’s College, formerly Map Library, British Library) and Alessandro Scafi (Warburg Institute). Meetings are normally held at the Warburg Institute at 5.00 pm (admission free) and are followed by refreshment. All are welcome. Enquiries: <tony(at)tonycampbell.info> or <c.delano-smith(at)qmul.ac.uk>. Under present circumstances, however, all will be virtual meetings (Zoom) unless otherwise informed (times are uncertain and not every meeting can be guaranteed as described). Those wishing to attend should register (there is no charge), after which you will be sent a registration link with guidelines. Meetings in London, when these are physically possible, are generously supported by the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association’s Educational Trust and the International Map Collectors’ Society. Today Dr Charlotta Forss (Postdoctoral Researcher, Stockholm University. In 2021–2022, guest researcher at the Faculty of History, University of Oxford, and Linacre College, Oxford) will discuss Septentrionalism: Mapping the Exotic North through History.

January 13, 2022 – USA (Online)

The Boston, California, Chicago, New York, Philip Lee Phillips, Rocky Mountain, Texas, and Washington Map Societies are offering a virtual lecture via Zoom . Anyone interested in participating in the meeting must RSVP to John Docktor at washmap(at)gmail.com in order to receive the meeting ID and passcode. Meeting will start at 7:00 PM Eastern Time, 6:00 PM Central Time, 5:00 PM Mountain Time, and 4:00 PM Pacific Time. Benjamin B. Olshin (retired Professor of Philosophy, History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, and Design at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia) will discuss Indigenous Mapping: Cultural and Psychological Sources. In cartography and other fields, “scientific thinking” is defined as an analytic and systematic way of observing and interacting with the world. “Analytic” in this context means examining evidence and constructing models of the world based on that evidence. By contrast, what characterizes non-scientific, indigenous cultures is — rather derisively — called “magical thinking”, a belief in structures beyond observable physical reality. This talk will examine how apparently non-scientific thinking (i.e., non-analytic thinking) can nonetheless create sophisticated maps and broader systems of knowledge, with parallels in other traditional systems, such as indigenous medicine. The talk will touch upon the underlying cultural and psychological frameworks that produce indigenous knowledge systems and note that such systems still exist deep within the human psyche everywhere — and may reflect how we truly perceive the world around us.

January 27, 2022 – London (Online)

The Thirty-First Series of “Maps and Society Lectures” in the history of cartography are convened by Catherine Delano-Smith (Institute of Historical Research), Tony Campbell (formerly Map Library, British Library), Peter Barber (Visiting Fellow, History, King’s College, formerly Map Library, British Library) and Alessandro Scafi (Warburg Institute). Meetings are normally held at the Warburg Institute at 5.00 pm (admission free) and are followed by refreshment. All are welcome. Enquiries: <tony(at)tonycampbell.info> or <c.delano-smith(at)qmul.ac.uk>. Under present circumstances, however, all will be virtual meetings (Zoom) unless otherwise informed (times are uncertain and not every meeting can be guaranteed as described). Those wishing to attend should register (there is no charge), after which you will be sent a registration link with guidelines. Meetings in London, when these are physically possible, are generously supported by the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association’s Educational Trust and the International Map Collectors’ Society. Today Dr Philip Jagessar (School of Geography, University of Nottingham) will talk about Orienting Imperialism: The Royal Asiatic Society’s Miscellany of Maps.

February 10, 2022 – USA (Online)

February 22, 2022 – Cambridge (Online)

The Cambridge Seminars in the History of Cartography will meet virtually on Zoom at 5:30 pm UK time. Sara Caputo (Magdalene College Cambridge) will speak about Ship tracks on European nautical charts, particularly in the long nineteenth century. All are welcome. For details on how to join, please send an email to events(at)emma.cam.ac.uk. The seminar is kindly supported by Emmanuel College Cambridge.

March 8, 2022 – USA (Online)

The Boston, California, Chicago, New York, Philip Lee Phillips, Rocky Mountain, Texas, and Washington Map Societies are offering a virtual lecture via Zoom . This meeting was arranged by Chicago and Rocky Mountain Map Societies. Anyone interested in participating in the meeting must RSVP to John Docktor at washmap(at)gmail.com in order to receive the meeting ID and passcode. Meeting will start at 7:00 PM Eastern Time, 6:00 PM Central Time, 5:00 PM Mountain Time, and 4:00 PM Pacific Time. Asa Simon Mittman (Professor of Art & Art History, California State University, Chico) will discuss Seeing Across the World: How Medieval Mapmakers Brought Their Monsters Home. “Telesthesia” – perception at a distance – is a key element of medieval cartography. This talk is focused on the Hereford Map, which is the largest and most detailed map to survive from medieval Europe. The talk explores the visual strategies that medieval mapmakers used to create the sense that a viewer safely ensconced in a church in England could see distant peoples throughout the world. It also examines the visual dynamics that seem to allow these supposedly-distant peoples to travel across the world, and appear within the “safe” spaces where the maps are housed.

March 10, 2022 – London (Online)

The Thirty-First Series of “Maps and Society Lectures” in the history of cartography are convened by Catherine Delano-Smith (Institute of Historical Research), Tony Campbell (formerly Map Library, British Library), Peter Barber (Visiting Fellow, History, King’s College, formerly Map Library, British Library) and Alessandro Scafi (Warburg Institute). Meetings are normally held at the Warburg Institute at 5.00 pm (admission free) and are followed by refreshment. All are welcome. Enquiries: <tony(at)tonycampbell.info> or <c.delano-smith(at)qmul.ac.uk>. Under present circumstances, however, all will be virtual meetings (Zoom) unless otherwise informed (times are uncertain and not every meeting can be guaranteed as described). Those wishing to attend should register (there is no charge), after which you will be sent a registration link with guidelines. Meetings in London, when these are physically possible, are generously supported by the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association’s Educational Trust and the International Map Collectors’ Society. Today Dr Catherine Scheybeler, Hakluyt Society Speaker (Rare book and manuscript consultant) will discuss Cartography as Naval Power: The Atlas Marítimo de España (1789).

Conferences:

December 14-18, 2021 – Florence

The 30th International Cartographic Conference, initially scheduled for July 2021, has been pushed back to December. Furthermore, the Conference will be prepared logistically both as face-to-face event (plan A) and hybrid event (plan B) with little local footprint and online participation options. Further details are on the website.

February/March, 2022 – Sydney

The State Library of New South Wales, in collaboration with the Australian and New Zealand Map Society, hopefully will be able to hold a conference at the State Library of New South Wales about the Mapping the Pacific. For more information, access to the preliminary program and registration please refer to the website.

Recent Mappy Links:

A 50-state guide to who controls the U.S. redistricting process (Brennan Center for Justice)
Texas lawmakers are freer than ever to draw partisan congressional districts (Texas Tribune)
Proposed district maps in Indiana show some of the worst partisanship in a half century (WFYI)
Without bipartisan compromise, Ohio state legislative maps are approved with a huge Republican advantage (Cincinnati Enquirer)
Draft council district maps in Austin, Texas, show a changing city ( KUT)
And… how prescribed fire and other forest treatments helped save a burning forest around Lake Tahoe (Bloomberg CityLab and San Francisco Chronicle)
Where the remnants of the World Trade Center settled after 9/11 (Bloomberg CityLab)
Why pandemic data dashboards became a must-have for governments (Bloomberg CityLab)
Visualizing a climate fix that can cool the planet fast (Bloomberg Green)
The United Nations’ new flood mapping tool reveals the world’s vulnerabilities (The Independent)
When misleading maps cause real-world problems (New York Times)
The supposed first map of America is a forgery (NPR)
An atlas of fictional Britain (Londonist)
Take a walk down a Brooklyn avenue, 100 years ago (Chris Whong)
Humans love to follow “pointy paths” — even when they’re not the fastest (The Conversation)
Volunteers are mapping the hottest parts of New York City (Gothamist)
From neolithic cemeteries to Roman forts, a lidar mapping tool lets you sail over England’s archaeological landscape (Daily Mail)
The revolutionary history of an “unwritten” corner of Greece (BBC)

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