Speaker Explores The Political And Cultural Symbolism In American Mapmaking, November 5

Chestertown, MD, October 20, 2003 — Washington College's C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience presents “THE GEOGRAPHICAL IMAGINATION IN AMERICA,” a lecture by Susan Schulten, assistant professor of history at the University of Denver, Wednesday, November 5, at 7:30 p.m. in the College's Hynson Lounge. The event is free and the public is invited to attend.
The author of the book The Geographical Imagination in America, 1880-1950 (University of Chicago Press, 2001), Schulten will explore how politics, history and culture influenced the study and presentation of geography in America from 1880, when maps first became widely available, to 1950, the beginning of the Cold War. Her research tells the story of Americans beginning to see the world around them, how maps of the historical period represented U.S. attitudes toward the world, and how four influential institutions—publicly available maps and atlases, the National Geographic Society, the American university, and the public school system—conveyed through mapmaking and the teaching of geography the political and cultural ideology of our nation.
Publishers Weekly described Schulten's book as “a well-documented account of how politics, history and culture influenced the study and presentation of geography… Theory is wisely balanced by a hodgepodge of odd and interesting facts about maps, politics and American cultural trends.”
For more information about C. V. Starr Center events and programs, visit the Center online at http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu, or call 410-810-7156.