SEES:7000 Colloquium - Thursday, 10/8/26, 3:30pm, 255 MacBride Hall

Matthew Wilson (Dept. of Geography, University of Kentucky)

Talk: Slow Maps: Cartographic Attention and the Question of Geography

Abstract:

The notion of ‘slow maps’ is a meditation on the map in the context of a frenetic digital culture, an attempt to pursue questions of speed in cartography, set against the rapid pace of cartographic experimentation and development in the last century. I argue that the new opportunity of cartographic practice is a renewal of a pre-digital challenge: how to produce an affective mode in mapmaking, not limited to a singular and universally-receivable map message? In developing the concept of cartographic attention, the book attends to a more pernicious question – what is the role of geography in contemporary life? By examining debates around United States geographic education in the early 20th century, especially in the context of a growing interest in hand-drawn maps, the book contemplates the origins of an ambiguity in the discipline regarding how to support, and innovate in, the teaching of geography. It tacks back-and-forth between these debates and our current situation as an expression of the question of geography, while considering the urgency of cartographic attention. In this presentation, I ruminate on the concept of slow maps, to better understand the rapid pace of cartographic experimentation and development in the last century. At stake 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.

Short bio:
Matthew W. Wilson, PhD, is Professor of Geography at the University of Kentucky and an Associate at the Center for Geographic Analysis at Harvard University. More here: https://www.matthew-w-wilson.com/