About this Event
Despite the attentions of cultural historians since the 1980s, maps still tend to escape close and critical study as fundamentally visual and material forms of communication, with histories of cartography remaining predominantly disconnected from these dimensions of the subject matter. This two-day symposium addresses this interdisciplinary challenge from a diverse range of perspectives that foreground such questions as: how do maps operate as representations, and how do culturally situated understandings of space shape how they are created, seen and read? How does the study of maps within specific historical or cultural contexts connect to broader issues in visual/material history? In what ways are coloniality and/or indigeneity made visible/material in maps? How can art-historical approaches inform other disciplinary analyses and uses of maps? Invited speakers will offer new perspectives through studies of cartographic objects from around the world, from early modern India, Iran, and China to the Atlantic world and contemporary South Africa.
Funded with support from the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the Courtauld Institute of Art, and the Bartlett School of Architecture.
Organised by Emily Mann (Bartlett) & Stephen Whiteman (The Courtauld).
Programme:
Day 1
09:00 - Registration
09:30 - Welcome from Emily & Stephen
09:45 - Panel 1
Chair: The Blathwayt Atlas: Bound and Unbounded
Emily Mann, Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL
The Gentil Atlas of the Mughal Empire (title TBC)
Chanchal Dadlani, Department of Art History, Pomona College
11: 00 - 11:30 Break
11:30 - Panel 2
Chair: Stories A Map Can Tell: Cartography and Politics in Late Mughal India
Samira Sheikh, Department of History, Vanderbilt University
Mapping water in early modern Istanbul
Çiğdem Kafescioğlu, Department of History, Boğaziçi University
12:45-14:00 Lunch (provided for speakers)
14:00 - Panel 3
Chair: The Practice of Perspective in J. A. du Cerceau’s (1511-1585) Topographic Views and Maps
Georges Farhat, Daniels School of Architecture, University of Toronto
The World Itself: Maps, Landscapes, and the Imagination of Space in China
Stephen H. Whiteman, Courtauld Institute of Art
15:15 -15:45 Break
15:45 - Panel 4
Chair: Mapping the World in Safavid Iran: Astrolabes and Manuscripts
Alexandra Brown-Hezaji, Department of Art History, Stanford University
Reckoning with Maps After Brazilian Slavery: Lessons from Jaime Lauriano and Rejane Rodrigues
Matthew Francis Rarey, Department of Art History, Oberlin College
17: 00 - Closing
17:00 - 18:00 Drinks Reception
Day 2
09:00 - Registration
09:30 - Panel 5
Chair: Mapping Fengshui: The Production, Functions, and Uses of Geomantic Images in Qing China
Tristan Brown, Department of History, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Terra Incognita
Rose Marie San Juan, Department of History of Art, University College, London
10:45 - 11:15 Break
11:15 - Panel 6
Chair: How local explorations created the global map: the part and the whole in Iberian Renaissance cartography
Zoltan Biedermann, Department of History, University College, London
Gerhard Marx’s Investigations of Maps as Works in Progress
Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi, Department of Art History, Emory University
12:30 - Closing from Emily & Stephen
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Lecture Theatre 1, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Vernon Square Campus, Penton Rise, London, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00