Mapping nature across the Americas / edited by Kathleen A. Brosnan and James R. Akerman.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Brosnan, Kathleen A., 1960- editor.

Akerman, James R., editor.

Series:

Chicago scholarship online.

Chicago scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cartography--America--History.

Cartography.

Physical geography--America--Maps--History.

Physical geography.

America--Maps--History.

America.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (445 pages)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2021.

Summary:

Maps are inherently unnatural. Projecting three-dimensional realities onto two-dimensional surfaces, maps are abstractions that capture someone's idea of what matters within a particular place; they require selections and omissions. It is these very characteristics, however, that give maps their importance in understanding how humans have interacted with the natural world and that give historical maps especially the power to provide rich insights into the relationship between humans and nature over time. That is just what is achieved in 'Mapping Nature across the Americas'. The essays argue for greater analysis of historical maps in the field of environmental history and for greater attention within the field of the history of cartography to the cultural constructions of nature contained within maps.

Contents:

People's nature. Staking claims on native lands: the symbolic power of indigenous cartographic conventions in the Ayer map of Teotihuacan Mexico (1560) and its copies / Jennifer Saracino ; Into the interior: reading the native landscape of the Great Lakes in European maps, 1612-1755 / Kelly Hopkins ; Currents of influence: indigenous river names in the American South / Craig E. Colten ; Oysters and emancipation: the Antebellum shellfish industry as a pathway to freedom / Michelle Zacks

Reinventors' nature. Transcending the Alps in the Andes: Charles Marie de La Condamine, Pierre Bouguer, and the graphic invention of the mountain range / Ernesto Capello ; On the trail with Humboldt: mapping the Orinoco as transnational space / Adriana Méndez Rodenas ; Palms and other trees on maps: exoticism, error, and environment, from old world to new / Brian Bockelman ; Beyond the map: landscape, history, and the routes of Cortés / Raymond B. Craib

The state's nature. Nature knows no bounds: mapping challenges at the US-Mexico border / Mary E. Mendoza ; Visualizing the Enlarged Homestead Act: mapping power and place in early twentieth-century US land policy / Sara M. Gregg ; Mapping Canadian nature and the nature of Canadian mapping / Matt Dyce and Graeme Wynn ; Seeing forests as systems: maps of North American forest conditions and the emergence of visual-ecological thinking / Peter Nekola

Epilogue. The View from across the Pond.

Notes:

Also issued in print: 2021.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from home page (viewed on May 5, 2022).

ISBN:

0-226-69657-X

OCLC:

1266904561