November 17, 1998 Contact: Leila Belkora (312) 996-3457 [email protected]
HISTORIAN TURNS RARE MAPS INTO TOOLS FOR TEACHERS
A satellite image of the Amazon basin, showing the confluence of the Amazon and Rio Negro rivers; a Chinese map of the eastern hemisphere, rendered in 1790 in delicate shades of green and gold; a city plan over 8,000 years old, painted on two walls of a room by members of a Neolithic community in south-central Anatolia: these form part of a collection of rare and unusual maps that Gerald A. Danzer, a professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has chosen to help high school teachers "tell the story of world history."
Color transparencies of 108 maps compose Danzer's teaching volume, "Discovering World History Through Maps and Views," published by HarperCollins. The maps come from a variety of sources, such as the British Museum and Chicago's Newberry Library; some even were inscribed on buildings.
Cartographic literacy, which Danzer promotes through his map collections, is more than the ability to find places on a map.
"Students must have the ability to come to any map prepared to strike up a conversation about its nature, its purpose and its rhetorical structure," he says. "Then the map can step out of its inert function as a scientifically drawn reference tool and reveal itself as a contrived argument about the nature and character of spatial arrangements. Cartographic dry bones will spring to life." Reference maps in the collection show the same place or topic from different perspectives - like the set of European maps showing rivers on one hand and cities on the other, drawn to the same scale so they can be overlaid. Source maps reconstruct past landscapes and cityscapes, record changes over time or document aspects of world cultures.
"The source maps give students a chance to investigate patterns of settlement from prehistoric through modern times or to compare the world views of Babylonian, medieval and modern peoples," says Danzer. "They can follow a Roman road map, observe scenes of everyday life in early China, Africa and the Americas, or measure Napoleon's loss of troops in Russia. We hope that the simple act of reading the maps in this collection will suggest novel ways to approach the past, fresh ideas for lectures and creative models for instruction." Teachers from high schools and community colleges around the country will learn how to incorporate the maps at a month-long seminar Danzer and his colleagues will run in July 1999 at UIC. The National Endowment for the Humanities will provide a stipend to participating teachers to help cover the costs of housing, meals and transportation. Scholars, curriculum specialists and cartographers will help lead the sessions, in which participants will closely read maps from all over the world during the last 8 millennia, but emphasizing the last thousand years. Participants will be able to use the UIC libraries and computer labs and the Newberry Library. They will take field trips to the Oriental Institute, the Art Institute and the Newberry Library.
The world map collection supplements two other collections Danzer has put together in the past: "Discovering Western Civilization Through Maps and Views," and "Discovering American History Through Maps and Views." The National Endowment for the Humanities supports Danzer's efforts to bring the use of maps to educators.
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