Abstracts of Conference Presentations

is presenting:

"Nineteenth Century Schoolgirl Cartography" to the Association of American Geographers meeting in Denver, in April 2005.

Prior to the 18th century, young women primarily learned accomplishments such as dancing, drawing, painting, playing the harpsichord, and fancy needlework. They would learn to read and perhaps, write. Toward the end of the 18th century, accomplishments wre less emphasized and by the 19th century, educaation for women had begun to change in earnest. Science began to be taught in boarding schools and fancy needlework was eliminated. At most schools, the earliest science to be taught was geography, and one of the ways of learning geography was by making maps. The maps they made were not fill-in outline maps, but elegant maps of states, countries, and the world. At least one young woman made an atlas of the United States. At some schools, girls learned basic surveying and made wall-sized maps. Girls wrote letters to friends about making their maps and recorded their thoughts about geography lessons and map making in their diaries This paper looks at the kinds of maps made by young women in the first half of the 19th century in the United States and how they fit into geographic education of the time.

Dr. Tyner is presenting:

"Mysterious Maps: The Role of Maps in Detective Fiction" to the Association of American Geographers meeting in Philadelphia, in March 2004.

Maps are widely used in detective fiction and have been since the earliest days. They are used by fictional detectives to help solve crimes, they are provided in books to help readers solve the crime, they are included as decorative touches on endpapers, they provide readers with guides to wholly fictitious places created by authors, and they are used by authors, while writing, to ensure that the characters don't cross non-existent bridges or drive down one way streets. This paper categorizes maps in mystery fiction and looks at the why of maps in mysteries: why are they made, what purpose do they serve, did the author begin with a map that became an integral part of the story, or did the publisher or art department decide to add a map?

Dr. Tyner presented:

"Tracing 50 Years of Cartography: Robinson's Elements of Cartography" to the Association of American Geographers meeting in New Orleans, in March 2003.

2003 marks the 50th anniversary of Arthur Robinson's "Elements of Cartography." This textbook through its six editions has both chronicled and shaped the course of academic cartography during that fifty year period. From its beginnings as a 200-page textbook, to its final 600+ page incarnation as a reference work, this book has been a major influence on applied and theoretical cartography. Beginning during WWII and continuing to the present, cartography has undergone a metamorphosis that has been called a revolution, and a review of the contents of "Elements of Cartography" reveals the prevailing thinking during this dynamic period. Prior to WWII cartography was a craft with a set of skills, but beginning in 1952 the field began a transformation into a discipline with research goals and a theoretical foundation. In this paper I trace the changes in cartography from the pre-Elements era to the present and examine the influence that "Elements of Cartography" has had on the field. In order to do this, I performed a content analysis of "Elements of Cartography" as well as the other standard American cartography books of the period, from Erwin Raisz's "General Cartography" through Borden Dent's "Cartography: Thematic Map Design."

She also presented:

"Elements of Cartography: Tracing 50 Years of Academic Cartography." to the North American Cartographic Information Society meeting in Columbus, Ohio, in early October 2002.

When Arthur Robinson published the first edition of Elements of Cartography in 1953 it marked a major change in American academic cartography. Erwin Raisz's General Cartography, first published in 1938 and revised in 1948 had been the standard text. Robinson's book represented the metamorphosis in cartography after WWII and set the standard for the second half of the twentieth century. A review of the book's contents through its 6 editions reveals the prevalent thinking in cartography during a dynamic period in the history of cartography. Through it we can trace changes from hand-drawn maps to the rise of GIS and remote sensing. Although Elements is no longer the major textbook, its impact was enormous. This paper traces the history of late twentieth century cartography through the pages of Elements of Cartography. A content analysis of all six editions of Elements of Cartography was done to determine the emphasis on various aspects of cartography. An analysis of Erwin Raisz's General Cartography was also included in order to note the changes in content and philosophy from pre-war to post war cartography.

She also presented:

"Following the Threads: Origins and Diffusion of Embroidered Maps" to the Association of American Geographers meeting in Los Angeles in March 2002.

In the late 18th and early 19th century, schoolgirls in the British Isles and the United States created embroidered maps or map samplers to demonstrate their proficiency in needlework and geography. A survey of samplers in collections in the United States done 80 years ago stated that map samplers made in the United States were quite rare, only about a dozen were known, but they were considered fairly common in the British Isles. In recent years, many more American made samplers have been discovered although they are still rare compared to alphabet samplers. Map samplers were created from student-made drawings, tracings of printed maps, patterns published in ladies' magazines, paper patterns, and patterns printed on silk. The purpose of this paper is to determine how and where the maps were made and by what method they dispersed from the British Isles to the United States. In order to determine origins and methods of dispersals, the characteristics of hundreds of samplers were examined and compared in the original and by using scanned photographs. A typology was devised to identify the various map sampler types. Using this typology it is possible to identify the pattern source and in some cases the school where a given sampler was made. It shows that there are distinct differences between American and British maps and between maps made at Quaker and non-Quaker schools.

While at the AAG, Dr. Tyner chaired a special session she organized on "Geography in Quilts and Samplers" and served as an invited panellist in two special sessions on "Accessing Geography II: Inclusionary Geographies" and " The Status of Cartography Education in the US."

Dr. Tyner presented:

"Millie the Mapper II: Experiences of Women Geographers and Cartographers in WWII" to the Association of American Geographers meeting in New York City in late February and early March of 2002.

During WWII and the years immediately following, hundreds of women were involved in geographic and cartographic activities, and yet, our histories of geography tend to overlook these women and their contributions. How did they become geographers? What was their training? What were the experiences of these women? These are the guiding questions of this study.

As Chauncy Harris wrote, this period was "a seminal period in the development of geography and geographers in the United States during a significant period in American History." This research addresses the role of women geographers during the 1940s and 1950s. Previous research has documented, at a broad level, the numbers and occupations of women in geography-related fields, but the lives of these women remain largely unrecorded. This project involved interviewing women who are still living combined with archival research of oral histories that were recorded by other researchers.

Dr. Tyner also made an invited presentation:

"The Hidden Cartographers: The Role of Women in Cartography," to the Texas Map Society, University of Texas, Arlington.

The history of cartography has been the history of men. Indeed, Lloyd Brown's classic, The Story of Maps, begins, "This is the story of maps; the men who made them...." And yet women have been involved in the map trades from early days. They have been largely anonymous until the late 20th century, and their accomplishments were not ranked with Mercator, Hondius, or Ortelius, but from the menial and low paid tasks of map coloring and atlas stitching, to drafting and engraving, to designing and patenting globes and globe stands, compiling atlases and writing textbooks, and to running map publishing companies, women have participated in the map, globe, and chart trades.

This paper is a brief overview of women's contributions of the map trades from the 3rd century to the 20th century. It looks at who the women were, the types of employment, the motivation for employment, and the roles women played in the trade.

"Folk Maps, Cartoons, and Map Kitsch: The Role of Cartographic Curiosities," to the Association of American Geographers, Pittsburgh, April 2000.

In general, any map that is not a conventional map has at one time been labeled a cartographic curiosity, or alternative cartography; even computer cartography was once considered alternative. Curiosities are popular with collectors, and cartographic journals frequently feature cartographic oddities, but they are not treated as serious maps. Although there have been articles on political cartoon maps, postcards, embroidered maps, puzzles, postage stamps, etc., curiosities have not been studied as a group, the terms oddity, curiosity, folk cartography, or alternative cartography have not been defined, and there has been little study of the impact such maps can have. The two primary works on cartographic curiosities by Gillian Hill and R. V. Tooley are really catalogs of unusual maps and there is little agreement on what constitutes a curiosity or oddity. This paper is a preliminary attempt at sorting out the oddities and analyzing the role they play.