A History of Maps and Mapping

LRBS Week 1: 16-20 June 2025

Maps are simultaneously ubiquitous in everyday life yet also strangely absent from much scholarly work outside the niche field of the history of cartography. How to catalogue, study, and discuss maps as historical sources for research is a subject that draws insight from critical bibliography, the history of the book, historical geography, and other subjects, making it an interdisciplinary and dynamic field. Since the 1980s, scholars have placed maps under critical review, questioning precisely what a map is and probing the social and cultural roles maps, and their makers and consumers, play. However, this re-envisioning of map scholarship has not always reached general or popular literature.

In addition to lectures, site visits, and in-class activities, each student will present a 5-minute talk on a map they choose at the beginning of the week. The talk will cover the map’s maker, design and technology, production, intended audience, and an examination of the meanings of the map with regard to its specific historical context and the larger history of maps and mapping.

This course will challenge students to:

• destabilize and broaden the traditional definition of ‘map’.
• recognize maps as socially constructed objects that are indicative of the values and biases of their makers and the cultures that created them.
• be able to analyse and catalogue maps for a variety of research purposes.
• discuss changes in map technology and style without recourse to a progressive narrative of scientific improvement.