New members and visitors are always welcome to attend these
events.
Please submit your meeting notices to John W. Docktor
<phillymaps(at)gmail(dot)com>
To learn more about
non-current maps see Map
History / History of Cartography.
Exhibition announcements
can be found at Cartography
- Calendar of Exhibitions.
Click here
for archive of past events.
December 1, 2018 – Antwerp Mark this date in your diary to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Brussels Map Circle at the Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp (Belgium). The 400 years old house of the famous family of printers is UNESCO world heritage and will be ours for the whole evening. You may expect guided tours, special pieces from their collection and ... good catering. Partners welcome! Program starts at 18:00 and guided tours in English, French and Dutch begin at 18:30. Please register in advance.
December 1, 2018 – New York The New York Map Society at 2:00 pm will have a Map Field Trip (and Social Hour) to the New York Transit Museum to tour their new exhibition: Navigating New York Due to space limitations at the museum, we must limit attendees to the first 15 reservations to Andrew Kapochunas <kapochunas(at)gmail.com>. There's still room, but I'll create a wait list, if necessary.
December 2-7, 2018 - Washington John Hessler (Specialist in Computational Geography & Geographic Information Science, Geography & Map Division, Library of Congress) will teach The Art & Science of Cartography, 200-1550 at the Library of Congress as part of the Rare Book School Seminar. The week long extremely intensive seminar is a deep dive into the origins of modern cartography and the early practice of scientific visualization as it emerged from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance. Students will use the amazing map collections of the Library of Congress’ Geography and Map Division to explore both the artistic and scientific methodology of early mapmakers and scientists, and discuss in detail the complex epistemological problems they faced as the mathematization of science provided more and more abstract models of the world within the natural philosophy of the period. You must register in advance for the course.
December 6, 2018 – Washington The Washington Map Society meets at 5 PM in the Geography and Map Division, B level, Library of Congress, Madison Building, 101 Independence Avenue. Mr. Ralph Ehrenberg; Chief, Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress, retired, will talk about Flying by the Seat of Your Pants: Rand McNally, and Post Office Belt Maps – The U. S. Post Office Airmail Service Air Navigation, 1918 – 1926. The United States Post Office’s Airmail Service played a pivotal role in developing the aeronautical chart in the United States from its establishment in 1918 through 1926 when airmail service was contracted out to private carriers. As the first organization in America to fly long distance scheduled flights on a daily basis, the Airmail Service worked closely with other Federal agencies, state and municipal governments, private industry, and civic groups to establish a national airways system analogous to the nation’s railroad and highway systems. The lack of adequate flying maps remained a major problem, however. As airmail pilot Ken McGregor remembered, “I got from place to place [by] the seat of my pants [and] the ability to recognize every town, river, railroad, farm, and, yes, outhouse along the route.” While a few pilots like McGregor relied strictly upon visual navigation, the majority resorted to using some form of published map. In an illustrated lecture, Mr. Ehrenberg will trace the history of map use by the Airmail Service and its own efforts in developing a basic aeronautical chart. For additional information contact Bert Johnson at mandraki(at)verizon.net.
December 7, 2018 - Louvain, Belgium The Université catholique de Louvain will have a symposium Représentations de l’espace et de l’altérité : perspectives historiques et interdisciplinaires [Representations of space and otherness: historical and interdisciplinary perspectives]. From mappaemundi to "Google Maps", the method of representing the world graphically plays an essential role in the way in which human cultures think and describe space, especially the space that remains outside of everyday experience. Through the presentations of four internationally known specialists (Chet Van Duzer, Marianne O'Doherty, Thibaut Maus de Rolley and Jean-Charles Ducène), this morning of study aims to explore how in the cultures of the past, in Europe and elsewhere, maps functioned as an interface of many cultural traditions. Additional information from antonella.sciancalepore(at)uclouvain.be
December 7, 2018 -Valletta, Malta The Malta Map Society in collaboration with the Russian Centre for Science and Culture will be holding a book launch (title of the book The Island of Malta and the Order of St. John by Grigory Krayevsky translated into English by Elena Yasnetskaya Sultana with introduction and editing by Joseph Schiro, Secretary of the Malta Map Society) at 18.30pm at the Russian Centre for Science and Culture, 36, Triq Il-Merkanti.
December 11, 2018 – Denver The Rocky Mountain Map Society will meet in Denver Denver Public Library, 5th Floor, Gates Room at 5:30 PM. Dr. Susan Schulten will talk about How Maps Reveal (and Conceal) Our History. Over five hundred years, America has been defined through maps. Whether handmaidens of diplomacy, tools of statecraft, instruments of social reform, or advertisements, these sources offer unique windows onto the past. Join Susan Schulten as she discusses some of the maps and stories featured in her new book, “A History of America in 100 Maps.” Gathered largely from the British Library’s incomparable collection, these artifacts range from battle plans designed by established figures to unpublished manuscripts drawn by ordinary Americans. Additional information from Lorraine Sherry <lorraine.sherry(at)comcast.net>.
December 12, 2018 - Floriana, Malta The next Malta Map Society committee meeting will be at 6pm at the Malta Historical Society headquarters at 41 Lion Street. Additional information from Rod Lyon <galleon(at)onvol.net>.
December 12, 2018 - Philadelphia The Philadelphia Map Society will meet at 5:30 PM at the home of a private map collector. Join us to examine the individual's Robert S. Teitelman collection-an entire first edition series of views from "The City of Philadelphia, in the State of Pennsylvania North America" by William Russell Birch. We will also view an assortment of rare manuscript maps, 18th century prints, aquatints, and mezzotints of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. Dinner will be nearby. Please RSVP by December 5 to Barbara Drebing Kauffman <philamapsociety@gmail.com>. Request the specific meeting address from her when you RSVP.
December 16, 2018 - Sint-Niklaas, Belgium Stanislas De Peuter, curator for the exhibition De Republiek boetseert de Wereld [The Dutch color the World] at the Mercatormuseum, Zamanstraat 49, will conduct a guided tour in English of the exhibition at 14.30. Earlier in the day, at 11.00, he will give a lecture, in Dutch, on the Wytliet Atlas.
December 20, 2018 – Chicago The Chicago Map Society meets in Rettinger Hall, The Newberry Library, 60 West Walton Street. The meeting starts at 5:30 PM with a social half-hour. Members of the Society will celebrate the Annual Holiday Gala and Members’ Show-and-Tell. We hope that you will join us for our annual Gala, which will feature an especially full smorgasbord of holiday treats for your dining and drinking pleasure. We will continue our tradition of pairing this party with our “Members’ Night,” which allows our members to showcase a special item in their personal collections. In the past, we’ve enjoyed hearing about maps, atlases, globes, and “cartifacts”—old, new, borrowed, and blue (yes, we have seen blueprints). The Holiday Gala will also include a Silent Auction of any items that you may wish to donate to the Society—the full value of which is tax-deductible! To help us assemble our program, please email us at contact(at)chicagomapsociety.org by December 15 with details about any item you would like to present to the group and/or donate for the auction.
January 17, 2019 – Chicago The Chicago Map Society meets in Rettinger Hall, The Newberry Library, 60 West Walton Street. The meeting starts at 5:30 PM with a social half-hour. Mike Flaherty will discuss Melchoir Huebinger and the Making of the First Automobile Atlas of Iowa. He will present a lecture on the maps and atlases produced by the nearly forgotten German immigrant cartographer and surveyor Melchoir Huebinger. His mapping of Iowa and Illinois spanned from the 1880s to the 1920s and included the production of vanity subscription atlases, military, flood, geologic and soil maps, production of general purpose state atlas, early automobile maps and route guides, and culminated in his incredible 1912 twenty-dollar "Good Roads Automobile Atlas of Iowa."
January 17, 2019 - London The Twenty-Eighth Series of “Maps and Society” lectures in the history of cartography are convened by Catherine Delano-Smith (Institute of Historical Research, University of London), Tony Campbell (formerly Map Library, British Library), Peter Barber (Visiting Fellow, History, King’s College, formerly Map Library, British Library) and Alessandro Scafi (Warburg Institute). Meetings are held at the Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London, Woburn Square, London WC1H OAB, at 5.00 pm. Admission is free and each meeting is followed by refreshments. All are most welcome. Desiree Krikken (PhD student, Department of Modern History, University of Groningen, The Netherlands) will speak about Bears with Measuring Chains. Early Modern Land Surveyors and the Record of European Physical Space. Enquiries: Tony Campbell < tony(at)tonycampbell.info > or +44 (0)20 8346 5112 (Catherine Delano-Smith). This programme has been made possible through the generous sponsorship of The Antiquarian Booksellers' Association, Educational Trust and The International Map Collectors' Society.
January 24, 2019 – Oxford The 26th Annual Series Oxford Seminars In Cartography runs from 4.30pm to 6.00pm in the Weston Library Lecture Theatre, Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3BG. Join us for refreshments in the Weston Café from 3.45pm. Charlotta Forss (Bodleian Libraries and Stockholms University) will speak about Rivers and ice: Early Modern maps of the far North. Additional information from Nick Millea (nick.millea(at)bodleian.ox.ac.uk), Map Librarian, Bodleian Library, Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3BG; Tel: 01865 287119.
January 24, 2019 – Washington The Washington Map Society meets at 5 PM in the Geography and Map Division, B level, Library of Congress, Madison Building, 101 Independence Avenue. Dr. Paulette Hasier, chief of the Geography and Map Division at the Library of Congress, will discuss her personal interests in the history of cartography. She will also explain her mandate to take the Geography and Map Division in new directions more attuned to today’s cartographic technology. This does not mean abandoning the historic treasures of the Library, but rather using technical means to make them more readily available to researchers and aficionados alike. For additional information contact Bert Johnson at mandraki(at)verizon.net.
January 30, 2019 - Floriana, Malta The next Malta Map Society committee meeting will be at 6pm at the Malta Historical Society headquarters at 41 Lion Street. Additional information from Rod Lyon <galleon(at)onvol.net>.
January 31, 2019 - Oxford The Oxford Seminars in Cartography Field Trip will be hosted by John Hawkins (St Edmund Hall, Oxford and Dundee University). He will present Old maps of Oxford: some myths and misconceptions. Booking essential - for further details, please contact: nick.millea(at)bodleian.ox.ac.uk or 01865 287119.
February 1-3, 2019 - Miami The Twenty-sixth Annual Miami International Map Fair will be held at HistoryMiami, 101 West Flagler Street. Contact Hilda Masip (HMasip(at)historymiami.org), Phone 305.375.1618.
February 6, 2019 – New York The New York Map Society will meet at 6:30 pm in Avenues: The World School, headquarters, 17th Floor Boardroom, 11 East 26th St. (between Madison and Fifth Avenues). Scott Max Edelson will speak about his book The New Map of Empire: How Britain Imagined America Before Independence. After the Treaty of Paris ended the Seven Years’ War in 1763, British America stretched from Hudson Bay to the Florida Keys, from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River, and across new islands in the West Indies. To better rule these vast dominions, Britain set out to map its new territories with unprecedented rigor and precision. Edelson’s "The New Map of Empire" pictures the contested geography of the British Atlantic world and offers new explanations of the causes and consequences of Britain’s imperial ambitions in the generation before the American Revolution.
February 14-15, 2019 - Stanford A conference on Mapping and the Global Imaginary, 1500-1900 will be held at the David Rumsey Map Center, 557 Escondido Mall. Maps have long been used to bring imaginary places to life, from Thomas More's Utopia to JRR Tolkien's Middle Earth. But the role of the imagination in mapping extends well beyond the depiction of fantasy realms. Some cartographers have conjured places that were only rumored to exist but that they hoped could one day be charted. Others have drawn on their creative faculties to map sites that were only hazily known. Not a few cartographers have intentionally imposed illusory elements on their maps, whether in jest or in earnest (to mislead enemies, to foil would be plagiarists, or to score political or philosophical points). In the broadest sense, all maps are works of the imagination: at the moment of creation, the mapmaker translates a mental image into a visual and textual medium that can be shared. The various contexts that shape this process, the forms chosen for sharing spatial visions, and the nature of the resulting maps’ relationship to perceived reality all form important aspects of the study of cartography. This conference, co-organized by the Global History and Culture Centre at the University of Warwick and the History Department of Stanford University—is designed to showcase research and facilitate conversation about the role of the imagination in the cartographic enterprise writ large. Attendance is free and open to the public and includes a reception at Green Library on Thursday, February 14th, 2019. but pre-registration is required.
February 14, 2019 – Washington The Washington Map Society meets at 5 PM in the Geography and Map Division, B level, Library of Congress, Madison Building, 101 Independence Avenue. Kass Kassebaum will tell us about Washington’s Mapmaker: Colonel Robert Erskine, First Surveyor General. Robert Erskine (1735–1780) was a Scottish inventor and engineer who came to the colonies in 1771 to run the ironworks at Ringwood, New Jersey and later became sympathetic to the movement for independence. General George Washington appointed him as Geographer and Surveyor General of the Continental Army at the rank of colonel; Erskine drew more than 275 maps, mostly of the Northeast region. His untimely death as the war was ending is largely responsible for his relative anonymity among the heroes of the Revolution. For additional information contact Bert Johnson at mandraki(at)verizon.net.
February 21, 2019 – Chicago The Chicago Map Society meets in Rettinger Hall, The Newberry Library, 60 West Walton Street. The meeting starts at 5:30 PM with a social half-hour. Please join us as we celebrate the publication of Emily Talen’s book Neighborhood, which is a critical evaluation of the idea of neighborhood. Through the exploration of cross-cultural and cross-temporal commonalities of the ways in which neighborhood articulation exposes conflicting purposes, and the varying levels of realization of neighborhood design, this book assesses the historical record and current relevance of neighborhood.
February 21, 2019 - Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium Sylvain Piron (EHESS, Paris) will speak about Le monde dans un panier d'osier. Les superpositions cartographiques d'Opicinus de Canistris at 18:30 in Salle du Conseil FIAL - Place Blaise Pascal 1.
February 26, 2019 – Cambridge The Cambridge Seminars in the History of Cartography will meet in Gardner Room, Emmanuel College, St Andrew’s Street, at 5.30 pm. Steph Mastoris (National Museum Wales) will discuss The Welbeck Atlas of 1629 to 1640 –William Senior’s last commission from the Cavendish family. All are welcome. Refreshments will be available after the seminar. For further information contact Sarah Bendall (sarah.bendall(at)emma.cam.ac.uk) at tel. 01223 330476. The seminar is kindly supported by Emmanuel College Cambridge.
February 27, 2019 – Philadelphia The Philadelphia Map Society will meet from 5:30-7:30 PM at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1300 Locust St. University of Pennsylvania Prof. Dr. Amy Hillier of the Cartographic Modeling Lab will share the multi-year development of an exemplary online research tool The Ward: Race & Class in Du Bois' Seventh Ward. Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois in 1896 was hired by the University of Pennsylvania at the behest of Susan P. Wharton to study residents of the Seventh Ward where the African American population was then focused, between Spruce and South Street, from Sixth to Twenty-Third. He conducted door-to-door interviews, preparing hand-drawn maps noting economic status and identifying the small portion of criminal class, in contrast to what he felt were city founders' biases that city crime arose in the Seventh Ward. Amy's team correlated Dr. Du Bois' maps with census and other data to provide detailed profiles of residents. Please review maps and analysis in W.E.B. Du Bois' The Philadelphia Negro (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1899, 1996) prior to this talk. Amy will join us for dinner nearby. Additional information from Barbara Drebing Kauffman <philamapsociety(at)gmail.com>.
February 28, 2019 - London The Twenty-Eighth Series of “Maps and Society” lectures in the history of cartography are convened by Catherine Delano-Smith (Institute of Historical Research, University of London), Tony Campbell (formerly Map Library, British Library), Peter Barber (Visiting Fellow, History, King’s College, formerly Map Library, British Library) and Alessandro Scafi (Warburg Institute). Meetings are held at the Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London, Woburn Square, London WC1H OAB, at 5.00 pm. Admission is free and each meeting is followed by refreshments. All are most welcome. Dr Elizabeth Haines (Department of History, University of Bristol) will speak about Labour Recruitment, Taxation and Location: Mapping (and Failing to Map) Mobile Populations in Early Twentieth Century Southern Africa. Enquiries: Tony Campbell < tony(at)tonycampbell.info > or +44 (0)20 8346 5112 (Catherine Delano-Smith). This programme has been made possible through the generous sponsorship of The Antiquarian Booksellers' Association, Educational Trust and The International Map Collectors' Society.
February 28 – March 1, 2019 - Tempe, Arizona Arizona State University will sponsor The Mapping Grand Canyon Conference which explores the art, science, and practice of Grand Canyon cartography. Join this celebration and critical examination of the cartographic history of a global landscape icon. Free and open to all, the conference promises a full two-day program of map-based story-telling, transdisciplinary analysis, state-of-the-art geospatial and cartographic demonstrations, engaging hands-on activities, and open community dialogue. There is no cost to attend the Conference. However, space is limited, so be sure to register to reserve your spot!
March 13-14, 2019 - Regensburg, Germany Southeast and East European History of the University of Regensburg invites you to the workshop Maps in Libraries 2019. The advancing digitization of library holdings allows easier access to resources that were previously poorly represented by the traditional catalogue. This also includes map collections: In digital environments, they are searchable beyond verbal indexing. Crucial for this is adding geographical coordinates as new values to the map metadata (via georeferencing). With the help of coordinates not only the retrieval of cartographic documents can be improved by visual geosearch systems, they can also be linked to other information – outside of the catalogue. The workshop Maps in Libraries provides a forum to discuss the results and perspectives of these developments. How is the response to new access points to map content? How are the data used - and do we even know about it? How are map documents found in a diversified landscape of portals and digital libraries? Who belongs to the target group of these new services - and is there one at all?
March 19, 2019 – New York The New York Map Society will meet at 6:30 pm in New York Public Library, Stephen A. Schwarzman [Main] Building, 5th Ave. at 42nd St. Christina Dando will speak on History of Women in Cartography. Christina E. Dando is Professor of Geography at the University of Nebraska Omaha. She received her B.A. in Geography and English from the University of North Dakota and her M.S. and Ph.D.s in Geography from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is interested in gender and geography: how landscape and environment have long been gendered, as well as how gender impacts human experience and interaction with the environment. She is a member of the American Association of Geographers and of the Society of Woman Geographers.
March 21, 2019 – Chicago The Chicago Map Society meets in Rettinger Hall, The Newberry Library, 60 West Walton Street. The meeting starts at 5:30 PM with a social half-hour. Please join us as we celebrate the publication of Susan Schulten’s book, A History of America in 100 Maps.
March 21, 2019 - London The Twenty-Eighth Series of “Maps and Society” lectures in the history of cartography are convened by Catherine Delano-Smith (Institute of Historical Research, University of London), Tony Campbell (formerly Map Library, British Library), Peter Barber (Visiting Fellow, History, King’s College, formerly Map Library, British Library) and Alessandro Scafi (Warburg Institute). Meetings are held at the Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London, Woburn Square, London WC1H OAB, at 5.00 pm. Admission is free and each meeting is followed by refreshments. All are most welcome. Professor Martin Brueckner (English Department and Center for Material Culture Studies, University of Delaware, USA) will speak about The Rise of Monumental Maps in America: Aesthetics, Technology, and Material Culture. Enquiries: Tony Campbell < tony(at)tonycampbell.info > or +44 (0)20 8346 5112 (Catherine Delano-Smith). This programme has been made possible through the generous sponsorship of The Antiquarian Booksellers' Association, Educational Trust and The International Map Collectors' Society.
March 21, 2019 – Washington The Washington Map Society meets at 5 PM in the Geography and Map Division, B level, Library of Congress, Madison Building, 101 Independence Avenue. Dr. Matthew Edney, Univ of Southern Maine; Osher Map Library; Director, History of Cartography Project, will speak about The History of Cartography Project: Its Past, Future, and Lasting Importance. In 1977, David Woodward and J. B. Harley conceived of The History of Cartography to encourage connoisseurs of maps, devotees of map history, and specialists dedicated to identifying and describing early maps to also consider how and why people have made and used maps - from mere documents to cultural artifacts. The effort exploded beyond their wildest expectations, expanding from a four book series to six broadly inclusive and increasingly large volumes, some with multiple books. It also fostered an unprecedented sense of community among map scholars around the world. For additional information contact Bert Johnson at mandraki(at)verizon.net.
March 23, 2019 – Brussels The Brussels Map Circle 2019 Map Afternoon will be held 12.00 - 16.30 at Royal Library of Belgium, Mont des Arts /Kunstberg. As usual, the Afternoon will be organised in close cooperation with the Maps and Plans Department of the Royal Library who will show some very interesting items from their collection. On the other hand, every participant is invited to bring along a map, object, book or anything else of cartographic interest of his own to be presented and discussed by the present fellow members. Always an excellent occasion to learn more in a convival atmosphere. If you have the intention to show an item of your collection, please let it know to the organising team with an e-mail at mapaf(at)bimcc.org. You are kindly invited at 12.00 to start the afternoon with a reception and sandwich lunch plus dessert. Please register for this exclusive event via our website.
April 3, 2019 – Philadelphia The Philadelphia Map Society will meet from 5:30-7:30 PM at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1300 Locust St. Dr. Larry E. Tise, Historian, East Carolina University, will present How Maps Made America. Larry has researched both manuscript and printed maps generated by explorers, surveyors, and real estate promoters ranging from the earliest European ventures to North America to the locations of river dams and transportation systems in the twentieth century. He will share with us some of his unusual discoveries, including the origins of hand-colored engraved maps beginning in the 16th century. Additional information from Barbara Drebing Kauffman <philamapsociety(at)gmail.com>.
April 3-7, 2019 - Washington Join the American Association of Geographers at the AAG Annual Meeting for the latest in research and applications in geography, sustainability, and GIScience. The AAG Annual Meeting is an interdisciplinary forum open to anyone with an interest in geography and related disciplines. All scholars, researchers, and students are welcome. The five-day conference will host more than 7,000 geographers from around the world and feature over 5,000 presentations, posters, workshops, and field trips by leading scholars, experts, and researchers.
April 11, 2019 – Washington The Washington Map Society meets at 5 PM in the Geography and Map Division, B level, Library of Congress, Madison Building, 101 Independence Avenue. Dr. Ronald Grim, formerly Curator of Maps, Leventhal Map Center, Boston Public Library, will speak about In the Footsteps of the Crime (Recovering a Map Masterpiece stolen by E. Forbes Smiley). For additional information contact Bert Johnson at mandraki(at)verizon.net.
April 18, , 2019 – Chicago The Chicago Map Society meets in Rettinger Hall, The Newberry Library, 60 West Walton Street. The meeting starts at 5:30 PM with a social half-hour. Kevin Lewis will talk about Illinois Counties.
April 27, 2019 - Richmond The 2019 Voorhees Lecture on the History of Cartography will be held at the Library of Virginia, 800 E Broad St. We are pleased to announce that Stephen J. Hornsby has accepted our invitation to speak on pictorial maps. Dr. Hornsby’s latest book, Picturing America: The Golden of Age of Pictorial Maps, was published in 2017. As in previous years, the lecture will be complemented by an exhibition of pictorial maps from the Library’s collections.
May 2, 2019 - London The Twenty-Eighth Series of “Maps and Society” lectures in the history of cartography are convened by Catherine Delano-Smith (Institute of Historical Research, University of London), Tony Campbell (formerly Map Library, British Library), Peter Barber (Visiting Fellow, History, King’s College, formerly Map Library, British Library) and Alessandro Scafi (Warburg Institute). Meetings are held at the Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London, Woburn Square, London WC1H OAB, at 5.00 pm. Admission is free and each meeting is followed by refreshments. All are most welcome. Jeremy Brown (PhD student, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London, and the British Library) will speak about Democratising the Grand Tour: Self-reliant Travel and the First Italian Road Atlases in the 1770s. Enquiries: Tony Campbell < tony(at)tonycampbell.info > or +44 (0)20 8346 5112 (Catherine Delano-Smith). This programme has been made possible through the generous sponsorship of The Antiquarian Booksellers' Association, Educational Trust and The International Map Collectors' Society.
May 2, 2019 – New York The New York Map Society will meet at 6:30 pm in New York Public Library, Stephen A. Schwarzman [Main] Building, 5th Ave. at 42nd St. Matthew Edney will speak on The History of Cartography Project. Edney is a professor of geography and (since 2007) the Osher Professor in the History of Cartography, with responsibility for courses in map history. He is also “faculty scholar” in the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education, Portland, Maine. Since 2005 he has directed the History of Cartography Project at the University of Wisconsin- Madison.
May 3-5, 2019 - Chicago The 5th Chicago International Map Fair will be held at the Newberry Library, 60 West Walton Street. The Chicago Map Fair is sponsored by the History in Your Hands Foundation (HIYHF), a non-profit organization with a mission to provide classrooms with authentic, historical objects in an effort to help foster a more enriched learning experience. The lecture series portion of the Chicago Map Fair will be sponsored by the Chicago Map Society.
May 7, 2019 – Cambridge The Cambridge Seminars in the History of Cartography will meet in Gardner Room, Emmanuel College, St Andrew’s Street, at 5.30 pm. Natasha Pairaudeau (Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge) & Marie de Rugy (Wolfson College Cambridge) will discuss Burmese cloth maps and itineraries in Cambridge University collections. All are welcome. Refreshments will be available after the seminar. For further information contact Sarah Bendall (sarah.bendall(at)emma.cam.ac.uk) at tel. 01223 330476. The seminar is kindly supported by Emmanuel College Cambridge.
May 9-12, 2019 – Kalamazoo, Michigan The fifty-forth International Congress on Medieval Studies meets on the campus of Western Michigan University. As many of you know, Felicitas Schmieder and Dan Terkla have organized “Mappings” sessions at the past three years of this ICMS at Kalamazoo, and you are invited you to join them. Currently they seek paper, panel discussion, and roundtable proposals that concur with one of our accepted ICMS “Mappings” rubrics: 1) “Pictura et Scriptura on/and Medieval Maps; 2) “Skin and Ink: The Materiality of Medieval Maps and Their Codicological Analogs”; 3) “‘Build it and they [hopefully won’t] come’: Placement and Displacement on Medieval Maps” and 4) “Seeing What’s no Longer There: New Imaging Technologies and Medieval Maps.” Proposals are due by September 21, 2018. Contact Felicitas Schmieder <felicitas.schmieder(at)fernuni-hagen.de> or Dan Terkla <terkla(at)iwu.edu> for additional information.
Another session has been organized by Giovanna Montenegro. Papers are sought for “Re-Mapping/Re-Reading Pre-Modern Travel Narratives and Maps.” This panel seeks papers that explore ways through which pre-modern travel narratives can be read geographically; also it seeks ways to read maps that were influenced by literature, i.e. literary cartographies. In what ways are late Medieval and early Renaissance maps shaped by literature? Inversely, how are travel narratives and chronicles shaped by the cartographic tradition. Proposals are due by September 21, 2018. Additional information from Giovanna Montenegro <gmontene(at)binghamton.edu>.
May 16, 2019 – Chicago The Chicago Map Society meets in Rettinger Hall, The Newberry Library, 60 West Walton Street. The meeting starts at 5:30 PM with a social half-hour. Michael Conzen will discuss Chicago Diagrammed: Frank Glossop and the Mapping of Business Before and After the Fire. As befits any great metropolis, Chicago lays claim to a rich history of being mapped as a city, despite its relatively short history. (We are still nearly two decades shy of the city’s bicentennial). The pantheon of Chicago’s well-known cartographers, however, lacks one figure who should be in the line-up. The name of Frank Glossop (1838-1889) does not easily roll off the tongues of Chicago’s map historians, but it should. This talk will review his life story and assess the role that his unusual mapping ultimately played in his restless search for a stable living and for respect as a Chicago booster.
May 20-22, 2019 - Mulhouse, France The conference, Cross-border and Intercultural Representations from Ancient History to Today, aims to reflect on and debate the cartography of transboundary and intercultural phenomena. Through an international lens, and drawing from multiple disciplines, it ought to contribute to the conceptualisation of maps independent of political borders by inviting us to think about them across three axes: time (How compatible have intercultural phenomena and cartographic enterprises been throughout history?), space (what are the possible approaches when mapping intercultural or cross-border phenomena depending on the area of study, of creation and of diffusion of maps?), and method (how/why can making maps show such phenomena?). Conference will be held at Campus Fonderie – Université de Haute-Alsace, 16 rue de la Fonderie. Additional information from Benjamin Furst <benjamin.furst(at)uha.fr>.
May 23, 2019 – Oxford The 26th Annual Series Oxford Seminars In Cartography runs from 4.30pm to 6.00pm in the Weston Library Lecture Theatre, Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3BG. Join us for refreshments in the Weston Café from 3.45pm. Yossi Rapaport (Queen Mary, University of London) will speak about Before the portolan charts: lost maps of the sea in the Fatimid Book of Curiosities. Additional information from Nick Millea (nick.millea(at)bodleian.ox.ac.uk), Map Librarian, Bodleian Library, Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3BG; Tel: 01865 287119.
June 8-9, 2019 – London The London Map Fair, the largest antique map fair in Europe, established 1980, brings together around 40 of the leading national and international antiquarian map dealers as well as hundreds of visiting dealers, collectors, curators and map aficionados from all parts of the world. Map Fair is held in Royal Geographical Society, 1 Kensington Gore.
June 8, 2019 – New York The New York Map Society will meet at 2 pm at the World School, headquarters, 17th Floor Boardroom, 11 East 26th St. (between Madison and Fifth Avenues). Members- Only Show and Tell, followed by an end-of-program year Social Hour at a TBD nearby bar. Additional information from Andrew Kapochunas <kapochunas(at)gmail.com> .
June 20, 2019 – Lake Forest, Illinois The Chicago Map Society meets at the MacLean Collection at 5:30 PM. Peter Nekola will address What Does it Mean to Map a Forest? Cartography and Geographical Knowledge in the Lake Superior Country in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Many of us have almost instinctively come to think of maps as representing locations; where things are as opposed to how they work. But mapping a forest as a simple location may tell us very little about the forest itself. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the thickly forested "Northwoods" of the Lake Superior Country provided the world with vast amounts of timber, while the rocks beneath them offered some of the world's largest deposits of iron and copper. Both endeavors relied on extensive mapping initiatives to locate and extract these resources, in the process changing the landscape drastically. It is no coincidence that these forests were also the site of several of the world's first published ecological surveys. Locating, assessing, extracting, and, eventually, managing, conserving and preserving the Northwoods demanded sophisticated reasoning, which was made possible by developing increasingly complex maps that represented not just objects but patterns, conditions, and relations. In the end such maps would allow future generations to "see the forest for the trees." This talk will offer a brief history of these maps and an explanation of how they worked. It will be accompanied by an exhibition including many of the original maps from the MacLean Collection that will appear in Professor Nekola's forthcoming book “Mapping the Northwoods: Cartography and Geographical Knowledge in the Lake Superior Country, from Industry to Conservation.”
July 1-4, 2019 - Leeds The twenty-fifth International Medieval Congress meets at the University of Leeds. As many of you know, Felicitas Schmieder and Dan Terkla have organized “Mappings” sessions at the past eight years of this IMC at Leeds, and you are invited you to join them. They plan panel and roundtable discussions that concur with the IMC theme of 'Materialities.' Proposals are due by September 21, 2018. Contact Felicitas Schmieder <felicitas.schmieder(at)fernuni-hagen.de> or Dan Terkla <terkla(at)iwu.edu> for additional information.
July 12, 2019 - Utrecht It is a tradition that the International Cartographic Association Commission on the History of Cartography and the International Conference on the History of Cartography jointly organize a pre-ICHC event. For the 28th ICHC we have teamed up with the Map Collection of Utrecht University and will together host a workshop entitled Controlling the Waters: Seas, Lakes and Rivers on Historic Maps and Charts. Besides presentations the day will involve a keynote address by Prof. Dr. Bram Vannieuwenhuyze (University of Amsterdam) and a special map exhibit. Additional information from Imre Demhardt, Chair of ICA Commission on the History of Cartography: demhardt(at)uta.edu or Marco van Egmond, Curator of Maps, Atlases and Printed Works at Utrecht University Library: m.vanegmond(at)uu.nl.
July 13, 2019 – Leiden The International Society of Curators of Early Maps (ISCEM) will be held. Details to be announced. Contact Ed Dahl at ed.dahl(at)sympatico.ca for additional information.
July 14-19, 2019 – Amsterdam The Board of Imago Mundi Ltd and the Explokart Research Group of the Special Collections of the University of Amsterdam have great pleasure in announcing that the 28th International Conference on the History of Cartography (ICHC) will be held at the Koninklijk Instituut voor Tropen, Mauritskade 63. The theme of the conference will be Old Maps, New Perspectives / Studying the History of Cartography in the 21st Century. For additional information contact Prof. Dr. Bram Vannieuwenhuyze / Marleen Smit MA at Special Collections – University of Amsterdam, ICHC2019, Oude Turfmarkt 129, 1012 GC Amsterdam, The Netherlands; info(at)ichc2019.amsterdam
July 15-20, 2019 - Tokyo The 29th International Cartographic Conference of the International Cartographic Association will be held at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation and Tokyo International Exchange Center. The theme will be Mapping everything for everyone.
September 2-7, 2019 - Bucharest The 12th Congress of South-East European Studies will examine Political, Social and Religious Dynamics in South-East Europe. One of the conference panels, organized by Robert Born (Leipzig) and Marian Coman (Bucharest), is dedicated to the cartographic history of south-eastern Europe.
October 10-12, 2019 - Stanford The David Rumsey Map Center is excited to announce the second “Barry Lawrence Ruderman Conference on Cartography” to be held at the Center. The Conference will investigate the theme of gender and cartography. Please Save the Date and watch for details!
October 14-16, 2019 – Strasbourg, France Symposium Faire connaître les mondes en découverte [Make the world in discovery known] is sponsored by Bibliothèque Nationale et Universitaire, University of Strasbourg and University of Paris VII-Diderot. The symposium addresses the process by which the worlds in discovery are brought to the knowledge of a more or less wide audience. Innovative explorations have long been the subject of media, with filters that have given some place to fiction, to fantasy and to the actors' strategies. Media have changed dramatically over time: oral narratives or writings, maps, images of all kinds and more recently photographs, films, reports, television, the Internet... Today, discovery is not limited to the terrestrial space. It spreads into the sidereal universe, but also into spaces of fiction that, through myths, art, literature and philosophical tales, have never been absent from the worlds in discovery. These newly explored or invented universes are also "worlds in discovery", which help to popularize the media and which the symposium will take into account. The conference will focus on the process of discovery in its social context, the links between discoverers and media, the mechanisms of transmission by the media, the societal effects of media coverage of discoveries. The contributions can be of various disciplines, geography, history, sociology, literature, political science, etc. Reflection is not limited to any specific period of history or place of discovery. Symposium will be held in auditorium of the BNUS and working languages are French, English, and German.
November 7-9, 2019 – Chicago The 20th Kenneth Nebenzahl Lectures in the History of Cartography will be held at the Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton St. Watch for further details.
November 14-17, 2019 - Gainesville The 2019 Society for the History of Discoveries Annual Meeting will be held on the campus of the University of Florida.
September 6-9, 2020 - Sydney The annual International Map Collectors' Society meeting will be at the State Library of New South Wales in honor of the 250th anniversary of James Cook’s discovery of the east coast of Australia. It is probable that we will have a post conference trip to Canberra with a visit to the National Library of Australia, and its wonderful collection. Additional information from Maggie Patton (maggie.patton(at)sl.nsw.gov.au), Senior Curator.
July 4-9, 2021 – Bucharest The 29th International Conference on the History of Cartography (ICHC) will be held. Additional details to come.