Hi All-
I’m the Review Editor for the “Atlas and Book Review” section of the WAML Information Bulletin. I’m seeking reviewers for the following books (descriptions are taken from Amazon):
·
Mapping Beyond Measure: Art, Cartography, and the Space of Global Modernity (Cultural Geographies + Rewriting the Earth), by Simon Ferdinand,
University of Nebraska Press, 2019,
ISBN: 978-1496212115
In Mapping Beyond Measure Simon Ferdinand analyzes diverse map-based works of painting, collage, film, walking performance, and digital drawing made in Britain, Japan, the Netherlands, Ukraine, the United States,
and the former Soviet Union, arguing that together they challenge the dominant modern view of the world as a measurable and malleable geometrical space. This challenge has strong political ramifications, for it is on the basis of modernity’s geometrical worldview
that states have legislated over social space; that capital has coordinated global markets and exploited distant environments; and that powerful cartographic institutions have claimed exclusive authority in mapmaking.
Mapping Beyond Measure breaks fresh ground in undertaking a series of close readings of significant map artworks in sustained dialogue with spatial theorists, including Peter Sloterdijk, Zygmunt Bauman, and Michel
de Certeau. In so doing Ferdinand reveals how map art calls into question some of the central myths and narratives of rupture through which modern space has traditionally been imagined and establishes map art’s distinct value amid broader contemporary shifts
toward digital mapping.
In this book Edney disavows the term cartography, rejecting the notion that maps represent an undifferentiated category of objects for study. Rather than treating maps as a single, unified group, he argues, scholars
need to take a processual approach that examines specific types of maps—sea charts versus thematic maps, for example—in the context of the unique circumstances of their production, circulation, and consumption. To illuminate this bold argument, Edney chronicles
precisely how the ideal of cartography that has developed in the West since 1800 has gone astray. By exposing the flaws in this ideal, his book challenges everyone who studies maps and mapping practices to reexamine their approach to the topic. The study of
cartography will never be the same.
Spanning the Islamic world, from ninth-century Baghdad to nineteenth-century Iran, this book tells the story of Islamic cartography and the key Muslim map-makers who shaped the art over the centuries. Muslim geographers
like al-Khwârazmî and al-Idrîsî developed distinctive styles, often based on geometrical patterns and calligraphy, and their maps covered all the known world, from the sources of the Nile to the European lands of the north and the Wall of Gog and Magog in
the east. These map-makers combined novel cartographical techniques with art, science, and geographical knowledge to produce maps that could be both aesthetically stunning and mathematically sophisticated.
Islamic Maps examines Islamic visual interpretations of the world in their historical context through the map-makers themselves. What was the purpose of their maps, what choices did they make, and what arguments
about the world were they trying to convey? Lavishly illustrated with stunning manuscripts, beautiful instruments, and Qibla charts, this book shows how maps constructed by Muslim map-makers capture the many dimensions of Islamic civilization across the centuries.
Every map tells a story. Some provide a narrative for travelers, explorers, and surveyors or offer a visual account of changes to people’s lives and surroundings, while others tell imaginary tales, transporting
us to fictional worlds created by writers and artists. In turn, maps generate more stories, taking users on new journeys in search of knowledge and adventure.
Drawing on the Bodleian Library’s outstanding map collection and covering almost a thousand years, Talking Maps takes a new approach to map-making by showing how maps and stories have always been intimately entwined.
Including such rare treasures as a unique map of the Mediterranean from the eleventh-century Arabic Book of Curiosities, a twelfth-century map of the world by al-Sharîf al-Idrîsî, and C. S. Lewis’s map of Narnia, this fascinating book analyzes maps as objects
that enable us to cross sea and land; as windows into alternative and imaginary worlds; as guides to reaching the afterlife; as tools to manage cities, nations, and empires; as images of environmental change; and as digitized visions of the global future.
By telling the stories behind the artifacts and those generated by them, Talking Maps reveals how each map is not just a tool for navigation but also a worldly proposal that helps us to understand who we are by
describing where we are.
The reviews are due
the last week in October. I will send specific review guidelines once you’ve been assigned the book. Please contact me off-list if interested.
Thanks,
Ilene
Ilene Raynes
Jerry Crail Johnson Earth Sciences & Map Library
University Libraries
University of Colorado Boulder
184 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309