On Thursday at 10:30am, I will be talking about maps and art at the Annual Meeting of the North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS). My abstract read:

Remapping Spatial Sensibilities
In a number of recent articles, scholars have drawn connections between cartography and the visual arts. These connections are usually confined to questions of aesthetics and representation, eschewing larger conceptual and historical connections. In this paper, I deploy Jacques Rancière’s concept of the “distribution of the sensible,” which he uses to describe how art changes what we are able to perceive. Using a number of maps as examples, I use this concept to trace a history of cartography concerned with changing understandings of space. This periodization, I argue, suggests a path forward for cartographic work concerned with developing new spatial cognizance, or using Rancière’s terms, re-distributing what is spatially sensible. This path, informed by art theory, opens up exciting new possibilities for cartographic work to exist as an independent knowledge-producing practice, intersect with theories in human geography, respond to the current moment, and produce new representations of space.

The conference schedule looks excellent and people keep telling me good things about past meetings, so I’m excited to be participating.