Mapping and Countermapping

Catalog description

This hybrid practice-discourse course introduces students to the ideas, debates and practices in critical cartography and digital geography. How, who and towards what purposes are spatial relationships represented through maps? We will approach mapping with an emphasis on the ethos of countermapping to make more legible those perspectives, claims and epistemologies that are generally underrepresented. We will discuss how new mapping technologies and novel big data are shifting the mapping landscape, what new tensions and possibilities arise, and how these new tools supplant or reinforce existing power dynamics. Students will read and critique maps to understand the design, information, context surrounding the creation of the map. We will be learning tools and software to create our own narrative maps and countermaps, with the aim of using these in a final research project.