Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Introduction to how emerging digital mapping technologies like geographic information systems (GIS), virtual globes, and three-dimensional modeling are being utilized as new means of inquiry in the humanities and social sciences. Provides students with critical apparatus needed to effectively, responsibly, and heuristically use technology in digital cultural mapping projects. Analysis of different forms of visual presentation, with focus on data representation through mapping, reasoning, and argumentation to learn to critically assess map-based presentations. Tracing of history of mapping and spatial representation of place to learn how mapping has always been connected with societal structures, politics, economics, and culture because maps do not merely represent reality, but also produce reality by structuring world and organizing knowledge about it. Part of Digital Cultural Mapping Project supported by W.M. Keck Foundation. P/NP or letter grading.

Units: 4.0