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Short abstract:

Places in juxtaposition this intensification of handdrawn methods both in the establishment of cartography and in the teaching of geography, to better understand the productivity of drawing, diagramming, and mapmaking for learning about the world.

Long abstract:

The drawing of a line is the making of a world. It is this sense of mapmaking, as a post-representational practice, that both catalyzes and beguiles contemporary thought and action in cartography. However, all lines are not created equal. They may disguise or disclose the techniques of their making or the burden of significance they carry. Line widths and weights. Pattern and repetition. Then and now, the work of signifying the real begins with a simple question: how to re-present, well?

By examining the writings, drawings and exercises in muscular coordination by Erwin Raisz (1893-1968), I suggest that cartography was uniquely important as a pedagogical method in the early-to-mid-20th century. Of course, drawing and diagramming has long been an important aspect of the classroom. What is unique in this moment of US history is how mapmaking aligned importantly with the turn toward a global perspective in education – a turn that was also evident in popular periodicals like Fortune and Life. Since the Second World War, new geospatial technologies and techniques of geographic analysis have been inserted into the classroom, with both specific and general effects on the role of geography in American society. At stake then is how we might think the linkages between cartography and geography today, to amplify the work of drawing, diagramming, and mapmaking – and to think these linkages in terms of geographic education.