HIST 5316F: Maps, Mapping, and Historiographical Praxis
HIST 5316F: Maps, Mapping, and Historiographical Praxis
Fall 2025
Instructor: John C. Walsh
Introduction: What does it mean to encounter a map in an archive? And what is a “map” and what constitutes an “archive” in these encounters? How have historians understood maps as historical evidence and also as narrative devices? Indeed, what kinds of new understandings of the past might be possible when historians tell stories with and not just about maps? To answer these questions, we will read widely but also selectively in cartographic theory and a range of cartographic histories related to Canadian pasts (from the 18th to 21st centuries). Along the way, we will also do a sustained level of training in researching, reading, and producing maps. Students will apply all this learning to a directed research project using ArcGIS StoryMaps.
A disclaimer: this is a course about expanding what might be possible and even, perhaps, necessary for how historians study and talk with maps. It is a course that will be relentlessly critical but also aspirational.
Class Format: We meet once / week in a three-hour block. Class time will be devoted to discussing assigned readings and documentary films, but also to mini-workshops in applying our seminar discussions to historical materials related to maps and mapping practices. Especially important will be work from the start of the course learning to use ArcGIS StoryMaps, and so students will require access to a laptop in order to conduct some of our workshop activities. If this access is a challenge, please get in touch with the course instructor so we can strategize how to best support your learning.
Aims and Goals: Students will become familiar with the historiographical, epistemological, and ontological dimensions of studying maps and mapping practices. Indeed, beyond the specifics of our course materials, students will reflect on the limits and possibilities of knowing the past, and with this, the ethical and political freight that accompanies the doing, or praxis, of all historical research and representation.
Assessment: Attendance, Seminar Leadership, and Participation: 30%; Project Proposal: 10%; Conference Presentation: 10%; Final Project: 50%
Text: Students will not be required to purchase any texts as all readings and screenings will be available through ARES in the library and / or via the course website at Brightspace.
Questions? Please email me at: john(dot)walsh(at)carleton.ca