archive

Maps designed to get you lost

Edoardo Boria (Rome): Geographers and Maps: A Relationship in Crisis. Marc Jonathan Blitz (OCU): The Right to Map (and Avoid Being Mapped): Reconceiving First Amendment Protection for Information Gathering in the Age of Google Earth. Gilles Palsky (Sorbonne): Map Design vs. Semiology of Graphics: Reflections on Two Currents of Cartographic Theory. Rafael Company i Mateo (MuVIM): Making Politics — and Science — Through Maps: The “Europa Etnografica” Maps of the Atlante Internazionale del Touring Club Italiano (1927-1940). Liz Stinson on Where You Are, a book of experimental maps designed to get you lost. In many ways maps and monsters would appear antithetical: maps are about measurement and evidence; they attempt to document a real world out there in an objective way with empirical tools tested over time; by contrast, monsters are fantasies, mostly sparked by terrors, but sometimes born of desiring curiosity, too. A cartographer’s dream: Two books tell the fascinating tale of a rediscovered map of China. Territorial map of the world: Rafi Segal and Yonatan Cohen on how we are beginning to envision the world as a continuous space where the movement of people and information overrides geographical and political barriers. Casey N. Cep on the allure of the map. It starts with a kiss: Frank Jacobs on the world's twistiest border. When paradise was on the map: Toby Lester on the curious history of how geographers located Eden — and hell. Greg Miller on how the U.S. maps the world’s most disputed territories. An excerpt from Globes: 400 Years of Exploration, Navigation, and Power by Sylvia Sumira.