| THE PRACTICE, POLITICS, AND POETRY OF MAPS
Seminar Leader: Dr. Sherry Vatter
Department of History, CSU Long Beach
Center for Near Eastern Studies and International Institute, UCLA
Dates: Thursdays, March 25, April 22, May 6, 2004 (9am-4pm)
Classroom release time required. University Extension credits available.
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 is a map? 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?
In the second session 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. By comparing maps from Polynesia, Mesoamerica, East Asia, Southwest Asia, and Europe, we will explore how social and political realities influence the types of maps that are created and what maps reveal about the societies that produce them.
The third session will approach maps from artistic, psychological, and literary perspectives. 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.
The seminar will include a visit to UCLA’s Special Collections to view and discuss rare, pre-modern maps, a guided tour of UCLA’s Map library, and an opportunity to examine historical maps from around the world.
Cutting across the social sciences, humanities, and arts, the seminar is especially appropriate for teachers of history, geography, literature, and design, especially those interested in enhancing critical thinking skills and map literacy, for persons who find maps fascinating; and for individuals planning to use maps to interpret human movement through the ages.
Readings:
Short articles and two books, How to Lie with Maps by Mark Monmonier, a critical look at how maps are made and how they deceive, and The Atlas of Experience by Louise Van Swaaij and Jean Klare, a playful book that employs literary extracts and the conventions of cartography to chart the realms of feelings and experience.
Sherry Vatter is an historian of the Middle East and Africa with special expertise in women’s, labor, and urban history. She is a seasoned educator who currently teaches World and Middle Eastern History, Critical Thinking, and Historical Methodology in at CSU, Long Beach. For nearly 20 years she has lead summer workshops for precollegiate teachers on the Middle East and Contemporary Islam, as well as forums on Children’s Rights, and an interactive online project connecting Middle School students and teachers from Los Angeles and Afghanistan.
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