NACIS 2024

Time Travel with Cartography: Mapping Philadelphia’s Urban Landscape Evolution Across Two Centuries
Emily Zhou, University of Pennsylvania
In this presentation, I will delve into the process of reproducing old maps and rendering the early streetscapes of Philadelphia from an urban design project of mine focused on historic preservation. Drawing from historical land use maps, photographs, architectural data, and oral histories, we will compare the characteristics of maps and urban landscapes spanning three distinct eras in Philadelphia. Through this comparative analysis, I will discuss the various design decisions made at each stage of the project, which include choosing the texture, color, line-work, patterns, and typography. I will also outline the overall workflow from McNeel Rhino 3D to Adobe Software and share eight hands-on tips and tricks for designing historical maps in Illustrator as well as incorporating vintage effects into your work in Photoshop.

The Impact of WWII on Cartography
Judith Tyner, CSU Long Beach, emerita
Prior to WWII, cartography was a “mere tool” for geographers, not a discipline. There was only one American textbook, and few universities and colleges offered courses in cartography. There were also no courses in air photo interpretation and map reading. During and after the war, the number of universities that offered cartography classes increased dramatically and the subject had morphed from a tool to a discipline. This paper examines the impact of the war on the field over a short period of time.

Will-o’-the-Wisp, Map Collection Tours, Hauntology and Deep Time Spectres
Larry Laliberte, University of Alberta
In renewing ways to navigate institutional spaces of maps, and their containers, recent William C. Wonders map collection engagement workshops incorporated tactile ambience, aurals, and experiential movement to open up ways to re-read cartographic renderings as apparitions, situating their re-inscription, and retention in the spectres of deep time. By beckoning maps through hauntology – a praxis that disrupts the fabric of the normalized and operates in the fault lines of authorized histories, in-person tours construct terrains that interrogate and counter settler cartographies inhabiting a spatial corpus of colonial history. A history that continues to confer power, and haunt the landscape.

Mapping History Using Digital Tools
Eric Rodenbeck, Stamen
It's easy to think that our current maps represent a 1:1 relationship with the world as it is now; Google and others have given us tools to be able to navigate so effortlessly that the problem of mapping seems solved. Going back in time, though, presents a different set of challenges. Historical maps and spatial representations operate according to a different set of rules than our current maps do, and much can be lost in translation. Using examples from Stamen projects for the Alan Turing Institute, Columbia University, the Getty Institute, the University of Richmond, and Densho's maps of Japanese-American internment camps, among others, this talk will offer an overview of the problem space of historical mapping in a digital context, as well as provide examples of solutions arrived at through hard-won grapplings with sometimes difficult histories.