James Akerman, Director of the Herman Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography, The Newberry Library, spoke on "Riders Wanted: Maps as Promotional Tools in the American Transportation Industry." Akerman began by saying that railroads could not have developed without maps, prompting at least one listener to wonder if the same thing was true of Roman roads. The Director of the Smith Center at the Newberry explained that his talk would include only railroad and roadway cartography in which he would be drawing out such distortions as the omission of competing lines, the "smoothing out" of tracks, the distortion of small scale maps (for instance by foreshortening the distance to California), the exaggerated treatment given to "desirable" features like the national parks, and the general neglect of topography, particularly when "unfavorable." In general, Akerman found that these maps were full of sins of omission and of commission, describing them as "subtly misleading and manipulative."

Tom Conley, Professor of Romance Languages and Literature at Harvard University, spoke on "Worlds Apart: Maps in Classical Cinema and the Modern Movie." Conley used a great variety of film clips to show how often maps have been used, not only in setting moods, but also in establishing aesthetic contrasts, such as between a "deep" background and the very flat surface of a map. In general, he wished to persuade the audience that the use of maps goes well beyond the standard image of the map as a "briefing tool" used by the good guys to track down the bad ones.

Richard Francaviglia, Director of the Center for Greater Southwestern Studies and the History of Cartography at The University of Texas at Arlington, spoke on "Cover the Earth: The Role of Maps in Advertising and Promotion." After talking about the ubiquity of maps in our culture, and the centrality of advertising, Francaviglia went on to show how some degree of cartographic literacy—the ability for example to recognize state outlines—was often assumed by advertisers. He then developed five main points: the use of maps in advertising required a public reasonably versed in their habitual use; the maps used to represent a full range of types, including such symbolic examples as the famous Tranantula Map of the Fort Worth railroads; the use of maps is relatively recent, and partly linked to advances in printing techniques; maps are excellent ways of validating different kinds of spatial expansion; and maps have proved to be very complex in their effects on the consumer.

Dennis Reinhartz, Professor of History at The University of Texas at Arlington, spoke on "Making it Real: The Mapping of the Fictional, Fantastic, and Futuristic." Reinhartz explained that in the history of cartography, the mapping of the unreal is an old, honorable, and influential genre that is as yet little understood beyond its contemporary superficial entertainment values, offering up examples of "cartographic curiosa," and that has been only peripherally explore in serious scholarship. Since ancient times, maps have been successfully employed to illustrate and explain the speculative vistas of human emotions, morality, beliefs, ideas, and letters. For the purposes of inquiry and discernment, in his presentation, Reinhartz separated the examples of the cartography of unreality into three discrete and admittedly arbitrary, albeit overlapping categories. The fantastic group includes maps of sacred space, emotional realms, and reality fancifully augmented. By fictional maps, by far the largest group, Reinhartz emphasized that he simply meant maps of literary worlds. And the smallest group, the futuristic, encompassed maps of times to come outside the sphere of fictional literature. Thus, cartography frequently has given visual expression to diverse notations and domains, ranging from love, temperance, and Hell to nationalism and Utopia. Moreover, by mapping them Reinhartz said, they continue to be made more real for the populace at large.

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Last Updated 06/21/02