Luis Felipe Alvarez León on The Map in the Machine
In this talk, based on his recent book, The Map in the Machine, Luis F. Alvarez León examines these advances, from MapQuest and Google Maps to the rise of IP geolocation, ridesharing, and a new Earth Observation satellite ecosystem. He develops a geographical theory of digital capitalism centered on the processes of location, valuation, and marketization to provide a new vantage point from which to better understand, and intervene in, the dominant techno-economic paradigm of our time. By centering the spatiality of digital capitalism, Alvarez León shows how this system is the product not of seemingly intangible information clouds but rather of a vast array of technologies, practices, and infrastructures deeply rooted in place, mediated by geography, and open to contestation and change.
Luis Felipe Alvarez León is Associate Professor of Geography at Dartmouth College. His work focuses on the political economy of geospatial data, media, and technologies. He is currently working on the geographies of autonomous vehicles, and the changing political economy of remote sensing. He is the author of The Map in the Machine: Charting the Spatial Architecture of Digital Capitalism (University of California Press, 2024).
What’s better than a beautiful pictorial map? 3 STUNNING pictorial maps 😌
These maps are a complete set of 3, depicting American geography, history, and culture at a time when the country was struggling to define itself. Done by artists William Gropper, Paul Sample, and Aaron Bohrod, these maps were funded by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a government project created in 1935 to help unemployed Americans during the Great Depression.
The WPA employed more than 8.5 million people to work on a variety of projects, from building roads and painting murals to conducting oral history interviews with formerly enslaved individuals.
The 3 maps in this series —"America, its soil," "America, its folklore," and "America, its history" —were marketed to fit perfectly in any home, office, library or school. All completed in a pictorial, almost painterly style, each map portrayed America favorably, and also acknowledged cultural pluralities and difficult historic events.
All three maps uplift the idea of America as a “melting pot”, though this idea was often culturally observed as assimilation and a loss of “non-American” traditions and culture. Though less useful for navigation, these maps helped inspire pride in the United States, the land it encompassed, and the people that gave it life.
Maps: Paul Sample's America, its soil (1946), William Gropper's America, its folklore (1946), Aaron Bohrod's America, its history (1946)
#bpl #LMEC #maps #bostonmaps #localhistory #bostonhistory #bostonmuseum #thingstodoinboston #bostontourism
Martin Brückner: For the Love of Maps: Material Passion and Power in Eighteenth-Century America
Learn how “cartifacts” circulated in the everyday spaces of the Revolutionary War era.
In North America, the consumer revolution of the eighteenth century profoundly affected people’s material life and, as some argue, paved the way for other more momentous political revolutions. In this program, Martin Brückner will discuss how maps became popular consumer goods and how their material transfer as “cartifacts” came to shape everyday and political life in early America.
Martin Brückner is Professor of English and Director of the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware. The author of two award-winning books, The Social Life of Maps in America, 1750-1860 (2017) and The Geographic Revolution in Early America: Maps, Literacy, and National Identity (2006), his other published work addresses the material and spatial imagination in early American literary and visual culture.
We invite questions and comments from our live audience.
Julia Lewandoski on Mapping French and Indigenous Land after the Quebec Act
Learn about the changing land tenure systems of eighteenth-century Canada as seen through maps.
The 1774 Quebec Act is primarily known for partially provoking the American Revolution. But it also formalized the continuation of French, and by extension, Indigenous land tenures in British-controlled Quebec. In this program, Julia Lewandoski will explore how cartographers struggled to express and accommodate distinctive French and Indigenous forms of landholding on maps meant to assert British dominance over the province.
Julia Lewandoski is Assistant Professor of History at the University of California San Diego. She is a historian of Indigenous peoples, cartography, and empire in early North America. She is at work on her first book, Land Tenure Survival: Imperial Law and Indigenous Creativity in the Treaty Era, which explores Indigenous land ownership under successive imperial regimes in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Quebec, Louisiana, and southern California.
Tristan Brown on Fengshui and the State in Qing Dynasty China
Join Tristan Brown, S.C. Fang Chinese Language and Culture Career Development Professor at MIT, to discuss his work on fengshui in Chinese politics and culture. Brown’s tells the story of the important roles—especially legal ones—played by fengshui in Chinese society during China’s last imperial dynasty, the Manchu Qing (1644–1912). This program is part of our current exhibition Heaven & Earth: The Blue Maps of China.
The Blue Maps of China: A Conversation with Elke Papelitzky
Mapping the empire and beyond: How Chinese mapmakers saw their place in the world in the early nineteenth century
The blue terrestrial maps show the Chinese empire surrounded by its neighbors such as Japan, Korea, and India. Instead of mapping these regions according to their shape, the mapmakers added short texts indicating their relationship with the Chinese empire throughout history. This talk will explore how these early nineteenth century maps position the Chinese empire in space and time.
Elke Papelitzky is associate professor of Chinese history at the University of Oslo, Norway. Her research focuses on the history of East Asian maps in the early modern period with a particular focus on the maritime world.
✨ What if you could draw your own constellation? ✨
In our exhibition Heaven & Earth, you'll see how the constellations in the sky look different across cultures, with Chinese and European star maps drawn in different patterns.
This June, we're inviting our supporters to remap the heavens by drawing and naming your own star patterns. Maybe you want to celebrate Boston folklore, like the "baby whale" we've drawn here. Or draw your initials, your favorite emoji, or an invented creature... whatever you can imagine!
Add your constellation to our map today: https://buff.ly/4c42plK
#bpl #LMEC #maps #bostonmaps #localhistory #bostonhistory #bostonmuseum #thingstodoinboston #bostontourism #HeavenandEarth
Virtual Tour of Getting Around Town with Guest Curator Steven Beaucher
Join us as we walk through Getting Around Town with Guest Curator Steven Beaucher
A Conversation with TransitMatters: Transportation Advocacy and the Data Dashboard
Join us for a virtual event with TransitMatters, as they discuss their award-winning Data Dashboard tool, and the impact that open data has had on transportation advocacy nationwide. Since its founding, TransitMatters has focused on helping Greater Boston advocate for the safe, frequent, and reliable transit. The TransitMatters Labs Team drives transportation advocacy by building tools with MBTA data to engage the public and increase transparency. Their flagship tool, the Data Dashboard, offers insight into MBTA performance, ridership, and service quality. The Data Dashboard has played a large role in increasing awareness about slow zones throughout the MBTA network, reaching a solution to alleviating slow zones, and measuring when slow zones are lifted. This webinar will explore how TransitMatters’ Labs Team built this tool and its impact on transportation advocacy.