Seminar Questions

1. What similarities and differences can you see between medieval and modern maps?
2. How has the world been represented in different places?
3. What do cartographic representations of the world depict?
4. How should we read the source material of world maps?

Seminar Activity: Bring an example of a representation of the world

Primary Sources

• The Hereford Mappamundi
• Kangnido world map
• Harley J.B., and Woodward, David eds, The History of Cartography Volume Two, Book One, Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and Asian Societies (Chicago, 1992) (especially chapter 16, introduction to Southeast Asian Cartography)

Core Readings

• Bell, Duncan, ‘Making and Taking Worlds’, in Samuel Moyn and Andrew Sartori eds, Global Intellectual History (New York, 2013), pp. 254-279.
• Cosgrove, Denis, Apollo’s Eye: a cartographic genealogy of the earth in the western imagination (Baltimore, 2001).
• Harley, J. B., “Deconstructing the map”, Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization, 25, 2 (1989), pp. 1-20.
• Harvey, P.D.A., Medieval Maps (Toronto, 1991).
• Scafi, A., “Defining Mappamundi”, in D.A Harvey ed., The Hereford World Map, Medieval Maps and their Context (London, 2006), pp. 345-354.
  - substitute: J. Brian Harley, "Rereading the Maps of Columbian Encounter," Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 82, No. 3, The Americas before and after 1492: Current Geographical Research (Sep., 1992), pp. 522-536.

Supplementary Readings

Edson, Evelyn, The World Map, 1300-1492, The Persistence of Tradition and Transformation, (Baltimore, 2007).

Evely Edson, Mapping Time and Space: How Medieval Mapmakers Viewed Their World, London, 1997.

Henderson, John. "Chinese Cosmological Thought: The High Intellectual Tradition." In The History of Cartography: Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies. Ed. JB Harley, David Woodward, Vol 2 (Chicago and London 1994), Bk 2: pp. 203-227.

Raaflaub, Kurt A., and Talbert J. A., Geography and Ethnography, Perceptions of the World in pre-Modern Societies (Oxford, 2013).