Date: Thursday, September 17, 2020
Title: The Evolution of a Pictorial Map of Chicago
Speaker: Dan Vohasek
Location: Zoom Meeting
In our first virtually hosted meeting, Chicago Map Society member Dan Vohasek will be sharing the story behind one of the city’s most iconic pictorial maps; Walter Conley and O.E. Stelzer’s, A Map of Chicago Incorporated as a Town August 5, 1833. What started as Dan’s first map purchase ended up taking him down a rabbit hole from which he has never emerged, and we are excited to have him share what he has discovered thus far.
Date: Thursday, October 15, 2020
Title: The Voyages of Marquette and Jolliet in 1673-1675 as Described in the Jesuit Relations
Speaker: E. J. Neafsey
Location: Zoom Meeting
In 1673 Jolliet and Marquette and five other men made their famous journey to the Mississippi, leaving from St. Ignace. In the summer of 1674 Jolliet travelled from Sault Ste. Marie to Quebec to report the results of the expedition. And in late 1674 Marquette set out from the St. Francis Xavier mission in Green Bay for the Illinois village of Kaskaskia (near today’s Starved Rock Park). He and his companions spent the winter in today’s Chicago, reached Kaskaskia around Easter of 1675, but had to leave because of Marquette’s illness. His two companions hoped to bring Marquette back to St. Ignace, but he died on the journey and was buried near today’s Ludington, MI. Two years later, in 1677, a group of Kiskakon Ottawa brought Marquette’s bones back to St. Ignace. The story of these events will be told in the words of the Jesuit Relations, annual reports sent back to Paris by the Jesuit missionaries in New France at that time.
E. J. Neafsey was born in Chicago. He graduated from Loyola University Chicago and then went to UCLA where he obtained his PhD in Anatomy/Neuroscience. He was a professor at Loyola University Chicago’s Stritch School of Medicine for 33 years, teaching and doing research in neuroscience. He retired in 2012. He has spent many years doing prairie restoration at Wolf Road Prairie in Westchester. And, after high school he spent nine years as a Jesuit seminarian.
Date: Thursday, November 12, 2020
Title: A Timeline of City Maps
Speaker: Richard Pegg
Location: Zoom Meeting
Mapping a World of Cities is a collaborative timeline between ten of the cartographic institutions in the U.S. with the biggest and most comprehensive repositories of digitized maps. We’ve brought together our digital collections under a common theme: the link between cartography and the historical development of cities, from the sixteenth century to the present. With 85 maps of cities all across the world, Mapping a World of Cities showcases what we can do when we collaborate on digital projects, bringing collections strengths from many different institutions into a single virtual experience. Richard Pegg, who conceived and implemented the idea for the timeline, from the MacLean Collection (one of the ten cartographic institutions included) will be hosting a special presentation to the Chicago Map Society in which he introduces the timeline and discusses its development.
Date: Thursday, December 3. 2021
Title: How Federal Government Redlining Maps Segregated America
Speaker: Linda Gartz
Location: Zoom Meeting
Please join Linda Gartz for a Zoom discussion about her award-winning book, Redlined, and her discovery of the redlining maps used by the federal government to exclude African Americans from the middle-class dream of home ownership. Inspired by a trove of long-hidden family letters, diaries, photos, spanning the 20th century, Redlined interweaves a riveting family story with the history of redlining. Linda will display digitized versions of original redlining maps, share photos, read short excerpts from Redlined, and speak about the lasting impact of redlining maps that segregated America. There will be plenty of time for Q&A.
Six-time Emmy-honored Linda Gartz is a documentary producer. Her documentaries and television productions have been featured on ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, and Investigation Discovery, which is syndicated nation-wide. Her educational videos include Begin with Love, hosted by Oprah Winfrey and Grandparenting, hosted by Maya Angelou. Gartz’s articles and essays have been published in literary journals, online, and in local and national magazines and newspapers, including The Chicago Tribune. Born in Chicago, she studied at both Northwestern University and the University of Munich and has lived most of her adult life in Evanston, IL. She earned her BA and MAT degrees from Northwestern. To learn more, go to www.LindaGartz.com.
Date: Thursday, December 17, 2020
Title: Annual Holiday Party & Member Show and Tell
Speaker: Members of CMS
Location: Zoom Meeting
We welcome you to join us for an evening of digital amusement and virtual fellowship at the 2020 CMS Holiday Party! Grab your favorite seasonal beverage and cozy up to the computer screen as members share highlights from their cartographic collections. We still have several spots available for presentations (five minutes or less), so please reach out if you have an item you’d like to share.
Date: Thursday, January 21, 2021
Title: Map Collecting Device Collection
Speaker: Michael Flaherty
Location: Zoom Meeting
Maps can be wonderful to look at, but the way in which they were used is often overlooked. Not by CMS Member Mike Flaherty, whose personal collection of about 150 map measuring devices ranges from 19th century screw opisometers, WWI & WWII curvimeters, digital map measuring devices, and a whole lot more. Since there are few publications on the subject available, Mike has had to forge his own path when building his collection over the past five years. He will share with us a wide variety of map measuring instruments and his own personal research into their history and use. Join us for a fascinating presentation on the amazing diversity of different solutions for the simple act of accurately measuring distance on maps.
Mike Flaherty grew up in Davenport, Iowa and graduated with a B.S. in Geography from the University of Iowa in 1988 and received a M.S in Geographic Information Systems from the University of Redlands in 2005. He has worked as a geography assistant for the Census Bureau for the 1990 Census, and then got hired as a cartographer at the Defense Mapping Agency (DMA) in 1991. DMA has reorganized twice to the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) and then to National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). In his 31 year career with the federal government he has been manual cartographer, negative engraver, chart compiler, bathymetrist, lithographic imaging specialist, geospatial intelligence analyst, targeting intelligence analyst, program manager, staff officer, and photogrammetrist.
Mike is currently the cloud implementation lead for the Precise Imagery Division of NGA, in St. Louis, and manages the engineering of cloud services to review and deliver imagery products to U.S. military and intelligence agencies. He is a member of the Chicago Map Society, Washington Map Society, Road Map Collectors Association, and the Mercantile Library. He lives in Crestwood, MO near Grant’s Farm and works at the NGA facility at old St Louis Arsenal in the Soulard Neighborhood of St Louis, next to the Busch Brewery. And when he not collecting Iowa maps and map measures, he’s restoring his 1914 Ford Model T Speedster.
Date: Thursday, February 11, 2021
Title: Lines on the Map: The Process of Setting Poland’s Borders after the World Wars
Speaker: John J. Kulczycki
Location: Zoom Meeting
In 1795 the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth disappeared from the map of Europe. How were Poland’s borders set after 123 years following World War I? Following World War II, its borders were redrawn again. On what basis? Few countries in Europe have experienced such drastic changes in its geography and demography in the 20th century.
Join us on an exploration of the evolution of Poland’s borders after the First and Second World Wars, led by Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Dr. John Kulczycki. Dr. Kulczycki’s nearly five decades of research on East-Central European history (particularly that of Poland) and regional nationalism has led to the publication of over four dozen articles on the subject.
Date: Thursday, March 18, 2021
Title: Art, the Mughals, and Jahangir’s Globe
Speaker: Benjamin Olshin
Location: Zoom Meeting
The presentation will look at the fascinating South Asian tradition of Mughal paintings, which appeared during the Mughal Empire that flourished from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Scenes included royal portraits, court life, animals, and other subjects. Beautiful examples of this style are found in the albums of miniatures commissioned by the emperor Jahangir, who ruled from 1605 to 1627. One painting is of particular interest to historians of cartography: that of Jahangir standing upon a globe, by the artist Abu’l Hasan. The globe is rendered in particular detail—but what was the artist’s source for this image? And what is its meaning in this curious work of art?
Benjamin B. Olshin is a former Professor of Philosophy, History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, and Design at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. His book on the history of cartography in relation to the voyages of Marco Polo was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2014, and he has presented work on maps and exploration in areas ranging from indigenous mapping systems to voyages in the Atlantic Ocean in the Classical period. Following a BA in Classical History and Languages from Williams College, Dr. Olshin completed an MA and PhD at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto in Canada. His teaching, research and other work has taken him all over the world, with stints in Sri Lanka, the U.K., Canada, Italy, Portugal, Brazil, Japan, Taiwan, Turkey, Ghana, and Indonesia.
Date: Thursday, April 15, 2021
Title: Celebration of Volume 4 of The History of Cartography: Cartography in the European Enlightenment
Speaker: Matthew Edney and Mary Pedley
Location: Zoom Meeting
CMS members have been very important in supporting The History of Cartography series, founded by Brian Harley and David Woodward. In lieu of a pandemic-postponed launch party, please join Matthew Edney and Mary Pedley in celebrating the publication of the latest volume in the series, Cartography in the European Enlightenment. They will talk about the volume and the distinctive character of mapping in the period from about 1650 to about 1800.
Matthew H. Edney and Mary Sponberg Pedley are editors of Cartography in the European Enlightenment, Volume Four of The History of Cartography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019). Edney directs the History of Cartography Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is Osher Professor in the History of Cartography at the University of Southern Maine. Pedley is assistant curator of maps at the William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Date: Thursday, May 27, 2021
Title: Far From Jerusalem: The Exclusion of Jews on Christian Maps
Speaker: Asa Mittman
Location: Zoom Meeting
Join us as Dr. Asa Mittman of California State University relates how medieval Christian maps use principles of inclusion and exclusion to generate fictions of collective identity. This talk will examine cartographical images of Jews, thus far understudied but key to the creation of a central myth of the Middle Ages: Christendom.
Dr. Asa Mittman is a professor in the Department of Art & Art History at California State University, Chico. A former New Yorker, Dr. Mittman received his PhD in Art History from Stanford University and has written a number of books and articles on monsters, art, and film about the vaguely defined period known as the Middle Ages. His recent works include a book titled Maps and Monsters in Medieval England and a co-edited volume titled The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous. He also serves as a director of the Virtual Mappa Project, an online resource dedicated to the research of early medieval maps and geographical texts. Dr. Mittman’s current research, which he will be sharing with us, pertains to images of Jews on medieval maps and their relationship with Christianity.
Date: Thursday, June 17, 2021
Speaker: Dr. Anne Williams
Presentation: Puzzles in Geography from “Dissected Maps” to “Silent Teachers”
Location: Zoom Meeting
The map of the United States, made into a puzzle with each piece an individual state, is a time-honored device for teaching children geography. This talk covers map puzzles from their beginnings in the mid-1700s to the first World War, with emphasis on nineteenth century American puzzle ones. It focuses especially on the “Silent Teacher” puzzles that several companies in central New York manufactured from about 1875 to 1910. Most Silent Teachers were double-sided. They showed an individual state, cut on county lines, on the front, and an advertising image on the obverse.
Anne D. Williams is the author of The Jigsaw Puzzle, Piecing Together a History and numerous other publications on related topics. After completing an BA from Smith College and two years in the Peace Corps in India, she received her PhD in economics from the University of Chicago. She spent most of her teaching career at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, and retired in 2008. Her puzzling path began as a child and accelerated in two decades later when she started collecting jigsaw puzzles systematically and researching their history. Since then, she has written two books on the history of jigsaw puzzles and curated museum exhibits in Maine, Massachusetts, and New York. She collected jigsaw puzzles from the 1700s to the present for more than forty years. Most of her extensive collection, including more than 100 pre-WWI map puzzles, is now in the permanent holdings of the Strong Museum in Rochester, NY.
Date: Tuesday, July 15, 2021
Title: Mapping the Evolution of Edgar Miller’s Graphic Design
Speaker: Jeff Kruse
Location: Zoom Meeting
Edgar Miller was one of Chicago’s greatest modern visionary artists and designer, whose career spanned nearly the entirety of the twentieth century. A master craftsman, visual artist, architect and graphic designer, his work transcended genres and media, however was always resolutely modernist in tone, technique, and execution. Miller’s design work drew from influences as wide ranging as Fauvist expressionism, Mexican muralism, traditional and folk art, and Art Deco motifs.
During the booming commercial era of the 1920s and ‘30s, Miller was commissioned to produce graphic designs for many major local brands, including Marshall Field & Company, WGN Radio, the Brookfield Zoo, and the Container Corporation of America, with projects that consisted of hundreds of individual map and atlas illustrations. By exploring his prolific graphic design career—particularly through his catalog of woodblock printed, lithographic, and illustrated pictorial maps—this presentation aims to contextualize early modern commercial art in the Midwest. Miller’s work is exemplary of Chicago’s everchanging twentieth century art scene, and remains an influential and inspiring oeuvre to this day.
Jeff Kruse is an Evanston native who currently works as the Director of Operations for Chicago arts education non-profit Edgar Miller Legacy. Kruse has a BA from New York University and an MA from Fudan University in Shanghai, China. His professional background is in education technology, curriculum development, and media production. He also serves as Executive Vice President of the Chicago Art Deco Society Board of Directors. In his current roles, Kruse’s responsibilities include the development of tours, lectures, workshops, and artist residencies on a variety of cultural history topics of interest to the Chicagoland community and beyond. Through his continuous research, he actively cultivates his passion for twentieth century art, architecture, and design.
Date: Thursday, August 19, 2021
Title: CMS Field Trip to the MacLean Collection
Speaker: Michael Conzen
Location: MacLean Collection
Please join us for the annual Chicago Map Society trip to the MacLean Collection in Lake Forest, Illinois! It’s an incredible destination for map lovers and we are very appreciative that they have agreed to host our group once more. This year, Dr. Michael Conzen will be discussing the production and publication of county atlases, using a number of choice examples from the library’s stacks.
Registration is required and this meeting (our first in-person meeting this year) is limited to fully vaccinated CMS members. Directions will be circulated to registered attendees. MASKS WILL BE REQUIRED.