THE PRACTICE POLITICS AND POETRY OF MAPS

February 23, February 28, March 21, April 11, 2002

This enrichment seminar will explore what maps reveal about human actions and imagination, both in the past and present. Looking at historical maps provides a clue to how various societies have viewed the world. Analyzing borders and boundaries tells us how societies, including our own, view themselves in relationship to the rest of the world. The role of maps in art, poetry, and literature tells us that maps can reflect a society's basic beliefs and emotions.

The first session will focus on the language and critical reading of maps. What clues allow us to interpret the information in maps? How do various types of maps provide us with different views of the world? In what ways can maps be deceptive? What problems confront cartographers in our technologically changing, globally interconnected world?

The second session will explore how social and political realities influence the types of maps that are created. What do maps reveal about the societies that produce them? Do borders and boundaries reflect real life? We will look at maps in their historical context, using maps from different periods, from early human history to the present, and from different regions and cultures. We will compare maps from Polynesia, Mesoamerica, East Asia, Southwest Asia, and Europe.

The third session will approach maps from an artistic and literary perspective. How have cartographic imagery and maps of imaginary places functioned in and enriched Western and non-Western literature and pictorial art? What are the psychological meanings of real and imaginary maps?
By the end of the seminar you will understand maps and their role in human societies from many perspectives.