Reading Material Maps in the Digital Age

FAIN: FV-256827-17

Newberry Library (Chicago, IL 60610-3305)
James R. Akerman (Project Director: February 2017 to November 2021)
Peter Nekola (Co Project Director: October 2017 to November 2021)

A four-week summer seminar for sixteen school teachers on learning to interpret historical and contemporary maps.

The Newberry Library's Smith Center for the History of Cartography seeks NEH support for a four-week summer seminar for school teachers in 2018 that will consider how maps not only reproduced geographical facts and understandings, but also reflected and shaped their social and cultural contexts. The seminar will be especially mindful of how map literacy, and more specifically, the reading and use of historic map documents in the classroom and in scholarship has been affected by the challenges and opportunities posed by the digital revolution. Co-directed by James Akerman and Peter Nekola, “Reading Material Maps in the Digital Age,” will provide sixteen K-12 educators with the opportunity to develop critical map reading skills in the presence of a great archive of five centuries of material cartography. The four-week program of seminar sessions, workshops, field trips, and personal research elements is designed to help teachers read and use maps and digital resources effectively.