CfP: Due March 15: Maps and the Imagination

Invitation to submit proposals for a Special Issue to be published by Imago Mundi: The International Journal for the History of Cartography

Maps and the Imagination

In light of the ongoing “cartographic turn” in literary studies and recent critical attempts to “remap” the field of cartographic history, we are seeking contributions for a special issue that examines the relationship between maps (from historical prints to digital creations) and the imagination (from the impact of maps on literary and visual arts to earthworks and new media).

Following the growing interest in cartographic imaginaries, documented, for example, in studies like The Map as Art (2010), The Writer’s Map: An Atlas of Imaginary Lands (2018), or Fantasy Mapping: Drawing Worlds (2020), not to mention handbooks like Literature and Cartography:  Theories, Histories, Genres (2017), we seek to deepen our understanding of how maps shaped creative practices and products of the imagination broadly defined. 

By foregrounding the map-imagination nexus, this issue engages questions ranging from the philosophical to the practical. For example, proposals might consider: What do maps do for acts of creativity, and conversely, what does the imagination want from maps? How do maps help making and knowing imagined selves and communities? How does the image, rhetoric, and materiality of maps influence creative practices, be it for imagining social and political contexts, or for texts creating compelling stories ranging from classic epics and romance fiction to fantasy novels and climate fiction? How do methods and theories of historical cartography and forms of imagined thinking complement each other? How have the materiality and technology of mapmaking informed imagined subjects and subjectivities, and conversely how do expressions of the imagination allow us to rethink the nature of maps?

URL: https://www.udel.edu/academics/colleges/cas/units/departments/english/our-peopl…