If fourth grade was the last time you took geography, you probably learned about maps the same way your grandmother did: memorizing the names of adjacent states and capitals, learning the names of the continents, and perhaps the names of some European countries. In short, your grandmother's (and mine's) history of geography concerned the history of the nation-state. The essentials of geography concerned national and state boundaries, plus the political capitals. This most definitely constitutes nineteenth-century geography. |
Cartography can be re-imagined as the visual representations of place, space, and/or time. While we-English-speakers characteristically think of mapping places, some societies have used maps to represent time, and some have used it to represent space. |
Professor: Patricia Seed (seed@rice.edu) Spring 2004
Course Contents |
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Week 1 |
Introduction Here's what to show your parents if they ask you why you are taking a geography course. It includes all the new job opportunities. |
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Geography Matters  ; Map Learning Class Maps (coming) |
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Week 2 |
Babylonian, Biblical, and Han Chinese mapping |
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6,200 B.C. city map; 2,500 B.C. river valley map (present-day Iraq); |
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Week 3 |
Ptolemy Who? Do you know that there are grownups who actually believe this stuff? Greek Mapping ca. 100 B.C. |
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Week 4 |
Cartography--An Islamic Science? |
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Week 5 |
Chinese Map-Making Through the Ming Dynasty |
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Week 6: |
Introduction to Geographic Information Software: Revolutionizing Geography (Lab) |
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Week 7 |
The Portolan Tradition Carte nautiche |
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Week 8 |
Compass Roses: The Marriage of Art and Science |
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Week 9 |
Mercator: Man and Myth |
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Week 10 |
Mapping as Imperial Science (in chronological order): Portugal, Netherlands, England |
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Week 11 |
"To the Universe and Beyond:" Mapping from Space, Remote Sensing, NASA's Earth From Space Program |
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Week 12 |
Alternate Subjects, Alternate Histories. Representations of the history of agriculture, development of mineral resources, waterways and human settlements (including Houston's bayou flooding), body mapping |
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Week 13 |
Re-thinking Visual Representations of the Past: Using GIS (lab/demonstration) Yangtze and Nile River projects |
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Week 14 |
Maps |
Requirements |
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| Week 2 | Turn in a map of something important to you. You can draw, Photoshop, paint, build, create a web site, whatever. (No interpretive dance, however.) 10% |
| Week 6 | Turn in Your History of Mapping or "What I have Learned About Maps From the First Five Lectures I Didn't Attend." And yes, you do have to present these to your classmates. And then. we go to GIS. "What I Have (Not) Learned) 25% . Going to GIS 5 %, turning in GIS project 10 %.. |
| Week 11, 12, OR 13 | Critique of current uses of mapping. What should be mapped that either isn't being mapped at the movement, or isn't being mapped properly? 10% |
| Week 14 | Final Map. You can draw, Photoshop, paint, build; you can even write. Just as long it is either a) a map b) about a map or mapping. 40 % |
Readings |
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| Recommended reading: (in English) | Armando Cortesão, History of Cartography, 2d ed. (The first edition is OK, but the second contains a discovery made in 1968 that is of considerable interest.) David, Woodward, ed. History of Cartography contains several useful chapters in each volume. |
| (in other languages. You can still look at pictures). | Gaetano Ferro. Carte nautiche del Medioeveo all'Età moderna Alfredo Pinheiro Marques. Origem da cartografia portuguesa.. Joaquim Ferreira do Amaral. Pedro Reinel me fez: a volta de um mapa dos Descobrimentos. |
| If you want to buy a book on cartography, I would recommend Half-Price Books in the Village. You should look for a remaindered title that is well-produced. (Harry Abrams usually does a decent job; the best is Mercatorfonds, a Belgian publisher.) | |
| © 2004 Patricia Seed | |