Mapping the Election: The Impact of Historic and Modern Maps on the Midterms

Description

From peace treaties to gerrymanders, political maps are all around us, as they have been for centuries, telling us not how to get to the airport or dinner, but what to think. They not only define borders, they influence where and how we settle, move, invest, and fight.

In this interactive session, led by award-winning journalist Peter Keating, author of Power Lines: Maps That Shaped the Way We See the World, we will decode a series of vivid and visceral works of cartography that have turned out to be profoundly political in American history.

We will analyze, discuss and translate suffrage, redlining, and election maps, all with specific reference to the upcoming midterm elections. We will see—read—political maps the way we interpret speech, ads and social media: as instruments of persuasion, not simply direction.