“The Harvard University Institute of Geographical Exploration was one of the first and most well-wrought private institutions in aerial photography in the first half of the 20th century. Its short institutional life at Harvard was replete with materials, stories and scandal, and its pieces remain scattered today throughout the Harvard Archives and Libraries system and beyond.” Ana Luiza Nicolae tracks down what records, photos and other materials can still be found on the Harvard campus that once belonged to Alexander H. Rice’s HUIGE, which was not closely affiliated with Harvard’s geography department but was shut down at roughly the same time.
Tag: academe
Fraser Taylor Appointed to the Order of Canada
Among the 135 appointees to the Order of Canada last month was Carleton University professor Fraser Taylor, the director of Carleton’s Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre, and coiner of the concept of “cybercartography.” See the Carleton press release.
Brewer Wins Miller Medal
Belatedly noted, thanks to a story in Penn State News last month: Cynthia Brewer was awarded the American Geographical Society’s O. M. Miller Cartographic Medal at the AGS’s symposium last fall. Brewer, a geography professor at Penn State since 1994, is the author of Designing Better Maps: A Guide for GIS Users (previously) and the creator of the ColorBrewer colour design tool for cartographers. The Miller medal is no minor award: this is only the eighth time it’s been awarded since it was created in 1968; past recipients have included Waldo Tobler, Arthur Robinson, Mark Monmonier and, in 2017, John Hanke and Brian McClendon (basically, the team behind Google Maps). Brewer is the first woman to receive the award.
H-Maps, a New Discussion List About Map History
Despite the imminent shutdown of Yahoo Groups, and the lamented demise of MapHist in 2012, discussion lists are still a thing, it seems: H-Net, that venerable purveyor of academic discussion lists since I was in academia, has, with the collaboration of the International Society for the History of the Map, launched H-Maps, “an international digital forum in the historical study of the making, circulation, use and preservation of maps from the ancient to the contemporary period.” Scholarly in focus, to be sure.
Tony Campbell lists other discussion lists related to map history here.
2019 Ruderman Conference Announced
The 2019 edition of the biennial Barry Lawrence Ruderman Conference on Cartography has been announced. Like the inaugural conference in 2017, it will take place at the David Rumsey Map Center at Stanford University, this time from October 10 to 12. Gender is the theme of this year’s conference.
For this year’s meeting, all the papers will focus on the relationship between gender, sexuality, and cartography. While some scholars have examined the interplay of gender identities and mapping, particularly with regard to the role of women as buyers and sellers in the historical map market, this work remains isolated and has yet to make a significant impact on the wider field. This conference hopes to offer a counterpoint to this trend by bringing together diverse approaches and hosting interdisciplinary discussions.
The keynote speaker is Susan Schulten. Registration costs $100, or $25 if you’re a student.
The Limits to Mapping
“The Limits to Mapping,” a talk Matthew Edney gave at Yale University last week as part of the Franke Program series of lectures, is now available on YouTube.
Edney, who’s Osher Professor in the History of Cartography at the University of Southern Maine and the director of the History of Cartography Project (his name’s come up before), also has a new book coming out next year: Cartography: The Ideal and Its History (University of Chicago Press) is apparently an argument about how problematic cartography as an all-encompassing concept is, which ought to make for an interesting read.
Geographers on Film
The Library of Congress’s Geographers on Film collection is a video archive of interviews with cartographers and geographers conducted during the 1970s and 1980s. About 300 interviews were apparently conducted; 28 are online so far. Interview subjects include Walter Ristow, Arthur Robinson (in 1972 and 1984) and Waldo Tobler, among others.
ISHMap Symposium in Portland, Maine
Registration is now open for the 2018 Symposium of the International Society for the History of the Map. It takes place from 21 to 23 June 2018 at the Osher Map Library in Portland, Maine, and it’s free to attend. (Like many academic events, registration is so that they have a number to plan for.) Here’s the preliminary program.
ISHMap is still in the middle of its constitutional crisis, which is affecting the organization of this conference; here are the unpleasant details from the perspective of the Edney faction, which is running the conference.
Previously: What the Hell Is Going On with the International Society for the History of the Map?
Tomlinson’s Ph.D. Thesis Now Available
James Cheshire reports that the Ph.D. thesis of the “father of GIS,” Roger Tomlinson, has been digitized. Tomlinson completed his thesis, “Geographical Information Systems, Spatial Data Analysis and Decision Making in Government,” at the University College London’s Department of Geography in 1974. It can be downloaded as a PDF at this link.
Barry Lawrence Ruderman Conference on Cartography
The Barry Lawrence Ruderman Conference on Cartography takes place from 19 to 21 October 2017 at the David Rumsey Map Center at Stanford University. Speakers include a number of graduate students—the conference’s focus is on emerging scholars—as well as Connectography author Parag Khanna, who’s giving the keynote, and Chet Van Duzer, who’s giving a talk on the fear of blank spaces on early modern maps—something I’m very much interested in. [WMS]
CCA Annual Conference in Ottawa
The Canadian Cartographic Association’s annual conference gets under way tomorrow at Carleton University in Ottawa. Here’s the conference program. It’s just an hour’s drive from where I live, and by all rights I should be attending, but I’ve been moving house all month and there’s no way I can spare the time. Best wishes to the conference organizers and attendees.
Marie Tharp’s Scholarly Work
This short profile of Marie Tharp — the third I’ve seen this year — is notable in that it’s at JSTOR Daily, and links to two of the research papers she co-authored with Bruce Heezen (both of which appear free to access, but require a JSTOR account). Direct links here and here. [WMS]
Cartographic Japan
Cartographic Japan: A History in Maps came out last month from the University of Chicago Press. It’s a collection of 58 academic essays edited by Kären Wigen, Sugimoto Fumiko and Cary Karacas (see the table of contents) that provide, in the words of the publisher, “close analysis of one hundred maps from the late 1500s to the present day, each one treated as a distinctive window onto Japan’s tumultuous history.” Amazon, iBooks. [WMS]
Upcoming Symposium: Reimagining the Globe and Cultural Exchange
Further to my post about China at the Center, the exhibition of rare maps now taking place at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco: Mark Stephen Mir, who wrote the exhibition catalogue’s chapter on the Verbiest map, writes to share the following about a symposium coming up later this month: Reimagining the Globe and Cultural Exchange: From the World Maps of Ricci and Verbiest to Google Earth.
The Ricci Institute is hosting a series of events connected with our exhibition China at the Center at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. One of these events is an international symposium held at the University of San Francisco April 22-24 with extra events at the AAM and in the Manresa Gallery on the USF campus. The topic of the symposium concerns the history of East-West scientific exchange through the medium of cartography beginning with ancient maps and continuing to the present with the latest technological innovations. Internationally known specialists in cartography and East-West cultural exchange will be invited to share their research, while experts from Google and NASA will discuss the latest technological developments in enriching our knowledge of the world and the cosmos.
Registration on-site is $85, or free for students and USF faculty and staff. The program has been posted online (PDF).
Previously: China at the Center.
Third ISHMap Symposium
Also in Lisbon, also in June: the third symposium of the International Society for the History of the Map. Its theme: Encounters and Translations: Mapping and Writing the Waters of the World. It takes place 3-4 June 2016 at the National Library of Portugal in Lisbon—just before the portolan chart workshop. [via]