Chicago Map Society

02/08/2026

https://theconversation.com/women-have-been-mapping-the-world-for-centuries-and-now-theyre-speaking-up-for-the-people-left-out-of-those-maps-272757?utm_medium=article_native_share&utm_source=theconversation.com

Women have moved from mapmakers using their bodies to depict maps to being leaders shaping the field of cartography.

01/23/2026

On Top of the World | ANTIQUES ROADSHOW

Why is north (mostly) "up" on maps?

Maps show us the world. These wayfinding wonders show us how people think about the world, and sometimes they make us think about the world differently. So w...

01/19/2026

https://www.worldatlas.com/geography/what-are-the-different-types-of-maps.html

An overview of the different types of maps including topographic, climatological, thematic maps, weather maps, and politic maps.

11/10/2025

The team at UW-Milwaukee is behind one of largest map collections in the world!!!

https://www.tmj4.com/news/milwaukee-tonight/guardians-of-geography-the-team-at-uw-milwaukee-behind-one-of-the-worlds-largest-map-collections?fbclid=IwY2xjawN6x9ZleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFWRFBaTGNmbXZEdUNYbWpCc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHpO-_bC13g2wI1Vmrr5_Y6goxGhz2IlBwghvg8Z8E9wazum3yidZAeeHf5LC_aem_KRjCuBsQcM_vlCWqTdDKCw

One of the largest collections of maps on earth is in Milwaukee. With about 2 million different items, the American Geographical Society Library at UW-Milwaukee is a world-renowned repository.

09/18/2025

The Newberry Library presents
the 22nd Nebenzahl Lecture Series
October 16 – 18, 2025

“Mapping from Mexico: New Narratives for the History of Cartography”

Lectures will be held in-person at the Newberry Library and live-streamed on Zoom.

No admission charge. There are seven lectures by leading scholars on the history of maps and mapping in Mexico, hands-on workshops in making Amate paper, guided tours of some library materials related to Mexico City, the keynote lecture, and a Map Fair on Friday night and Saturday.

The keynote address on Thursday night features Raquel Urroz Kanan, a leading expert on the history of maps in Mexico.

More details: https://www.newberry.org/calendar/22nd-nebenzahl-lecture-series

This program is free and open to all.
Advance registration required.

In Person Registration: https://reg.learningstream.com/reg/event_page.aspx?ek=0057-0014-E9DB3F4FFE224EB4B9BA3FE34FDB3654

Live Stream Registration: https://reg.learningstream.com/reg/event_page.aspx?ek=0057-0014-58486f70a8ab400b849c6374094bfe46

The 2025 Nebenzahl Lectures continue to promote new thinking in map history by asking how orienting our stories from Mexico, looking out toward the rest of the world, challenges common narratives and popular assumptions in the history of mapmaking. Despite the prominent role mapping in Mexico has pl...

05/23/2025

The Washington Map Society presents a virtual meeting.

Thursday, June 5, 2026 • 6:00 p.m. CST

Our Fire Sits Here: The French Cartography of Indigenous Coalescence in the Native South

Lecture by Casey Price, recent Ph.D. graduate and visiting teaching professor, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

A polyglot indigenous group discovered a party of French led by Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette along the Mississippi River in 1673. The Frenchmen recorded Cherokee-sourced geographical information regarding the southeast’s interior, which found its way onto French maps, including Marquette’s Carte da la nouvelle decouverte and Jean Baptiste Franquelin’s Carte da la Louisiane.

The evolution of the indigenously sourced geographic information on French maps during this era provides enticing clues regarding the active coalescence of Cherokee, Creek, and other southeastern indigenous peoples amid increasing colonial pressure.

Casey Price, Ph.D. is a historian of vast early America focusing on the history of cartography and the Native South, specifically the Cherokee. His dissertation was entitled, “Given to This Land: Mapping Settler Colonialism in Kituwah, 1862-1810,” in which he examined the relationship between cartography and settler colonialism in the Cherokee homelands.

https://www.washmapsociety.org/event-6098766

05/14/2025

Biogeography: The Science of Mapping Life and How it Matters in Conserving Species

5:30 p.m. – social hour (delicious finger food and light refreshments)
6:00 p.m. – presentation by Richard Condit

Abstract: Biogeography is a sub-discipline within the scientific fields of ecology, evolution, and conservation. I will give a brief history of the concept, for example, Darwin’s use of biogeography in the Origin of Species. Then I will give examples of how maps are used
in scientific studies with emphasis on my own research using distribution maps of tropical trees. The maps provide rapid visual tools for understanding important patterns, especially habitat requirements for any species. Maps can also be used to identify species at high risk of extinction. Indeed, little in ecology or evolution makes sense except in the light of maps.

Speaker Bio: Richard Condit has studied dynamics and diversity of forests across the world, especially in tropical South America and Africa. His research covers ecological theory, demography, and environmental variation, and he has published over one hundred research reports and two books, including a Field Guide to Trees of Panama and Costa Rica. He also works on mammals and birds, including a long-term study of populations of the northern elephant seal in Calfornia. He retired from a research position at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, but remains active in research and continues mentoring young scientists.

01/29/2025

From Street View To AI — How Google Maps Mapped The World

Google Maps is the world’s top navigation app, and in February it will turn 20 years old. It’s aiming to stay ahead using new generative AI features, and a n...

01/14/2025

Overlooked No More: Karen Wynn Fonstad, Who Mapped Tolkien’s Middle-earth

She was a novice cartographer who landed a dream assignment: to create an atlas of the setting of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings.”

11/18/2024

This Thursday, November 21st, 2024

Title: Indigenous People and the Chicago Portage
Speakers: Eric Hemenway | John William Nelson | Raphael Wahwassuck

Location: The Newberry Library | 60 West Walton St | Chicago IL
Time: 5:30 pm CT (Social Time)
6:00 pm CT (Presentation)

Speaker Bios:
Eric Hemenway, an Anishinaabe/Odawa, is Director of Repatriation, Archives, and Records for the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians of Waganakising—The Land of the Crooked Tree—located in the northwest portion of the lower peninsula of Michigan. He has a lifelong involvement in researching Odawa history. He has collaborated widely with museums, universities, the National Park Service, schools, and various governments in conducting and presenting research to a wide range of audiences, including to students, staff, faculty, and the general public. He has a wide range of speaking experiences, writing accomplishments, and media projects.

John William Nelson, Assistant Professor of History at Texas Tech University, explores the ways ecology and geography shaped the terms of cross-cultural interaction between Native peoples and European colonizers from first contact through the early republican era of the United States. He is the author of Muddy Ground: Native Peoples, Chicago’s Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent, which explores how a particular local landscape along Chicago’s continental divide influenced colonial encounters from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries.

Raphael Wahwassuck is a Tribal Council member and Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation.

10/04/2024

Title: Charting Modernity in Late-Qing Maps
Speaker: Mimi Cheng

Date: Thursday, October 17, 2024
Location: The Newberry Library, 60 West Walton St., Chicago, IL
Time: 5:30 pm CT (Social) & 6:00 pm CT (Presentation)

Description: This talk focuses on a set of maps of China from the last two decades of the Qing empire (1644-1911) that reside in the MacLean Collection and Library of Congress. They were created in an era in which reform-minded Qing scholars and officials sought to modernize Chinese society by incorporating Western science, technology, and legal frameworks into its institutions. These political and administrative maps, created using woodblock and lithographic printing methods and colored by hand, reflect the rise of modern empiricism and the adoption of Western cartographic standards. And yet, they retain features that are characteristic of imperial Chinese mapping practices. By examining the form, function, and content of this set of maps, we gain insight into the evolution of modern cartography beyond the West.

Speaker Bio: Mimi Cheng is a cultural historian of the global nineteenth century with research interests in three overlapping areas: transnational visual culture between Europe and East Asia, comparative histories of cartography and the built environment, and the relationship between knowledge and imperialism. Her research has been supported by the American Council for Learned Societies, Social Science Research Council, German Historical Institute Washington, and the Forschungzentrum Gotha at the Universität Erfurt, among others. She received her PhD from the University of Rochester in 2022.

At the Newberry, she will be working on her first book, which examines the connections between imperialism, visuality, and technical knowledge in 19th-century Sino-western relations. It centers the creation, transmission, and reception of spatial images—territorial surveys, topographical maps, atlases, nautical charts, and landscape photography—in the Qing, German, and British empires. She will continue this project with the Lise Meitner Group “Coded Objects,” led by Anna-Maria Meister at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz—Max-Planck-Institut, in March 2025.