Scribner Seminar Program
Course Description
Understanding the World Through Maps
Instructor(s): John Lopez, Art History; Jordana Dym, History
A study of how maps are agents of knowledge and power. In this seminar, students will examine a diverse set of maps, cartographic practices, and readings to understand how maps shape our understanding of the world and why maps have been mobilized to meet social and political agendas. In testing and deconstructing mapmaking practices, students will learn to decode a map’s graphic commentary to understand how maps shape as well as mirror the worlds they show. In particular, students will read and make maps to consider how maps produce knowledge and power, their use in imperial encounters, how non-Western peoples resisted colonialism, and if there can be a “cartographic ethic.”
Course Offered: