WMS Meetings Info

Member and non-member information

Non-members always welcome!

The WMS is following the lead of other map societies and offering a virtual lecture via Zoom. Anyone interested in participating in the meeting must RSVP to John Docktor at washmap (at) gmail.com in order to receive the meeting ID and passcode.

The following will apply once we resume physical meetings.

Weather: The WMS follows the closing decisions of the Federal Government. If the Federal Government is closed, our meeting will be canceled. In the event bad weather develops later in the day, we may still be forced to cancel. We will attempt to send out a blast e-mail in that case. Please check your email account for a WMS notice before coming to a meeting when bad weather is predicted.

NEW LOCATION FOR OUR MEETINGS: Unless otherwise noted below or posted to WMS website and social media, physical meetings will be held on varying days of the week and will be held at 7:00 PM Eastern Time. Our new meeting site, the Naval Lodge Building, 330 Pennsylvania Avenue, Southeast, Washington DC, is two blocks from METRO's Capital South Station (Blue, Orange and Silver Lines). Eliane Dotson (president@wmsdc.org) is President and Ron Grim (ronald.grim@rgeographics.com) is the Programs chair. Eliane and Ron welcome suggestions for future programs and speakers. There is no admission cost; you need not be a member to attend.

Washington Map Society and Partner Map Societies

Programs for the first half of 2021 (updated March 1, 2021)

Thursday 22 April 2021 (Organized in conjunction with the Chicago Map Society. Sponsored in partnership with the Boston, California, Chicago, New York, Philip Lee Phillips, Rocky Mountain, and Texas Map Societies).

Location: Zoom, 7:00 PM ET/6:00 PM CT/ 5:00 PM MT/4:00PM PT

Title: Reading Maps in 20^th Century Travel Brochures: A Primer

Speaker: James Akerman, Director of Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography, and Curator of Maps, The Newberry Library, Chicago

For the past several decades, the Newberry Library has been collecting travel brochures advertising tourist attractions, points of interest, and other localities of potential interest to leisure travelers. Most of the library’s extensive holdings of these materials (numbering at least 100,000 items) are North American in origin and date from the late 19^th to the early 21^st centuries. In this presentation, Akerman will introduce us to this collection, by focusing on approximately 20 examples, offering a preliminary methodology for describing and drawing meaning from these ubiquitous yet widely disregarded sources at the intersection between mapping, cultural geography, and the history of travel and tourism. The presentation will consider three areas: (1) the physical relationship of the maps to the other elements of the brochure; (2) the authorship, design, and content of the maps; and (3) questions of meaning and interpretation. These are by no means an exhaustive list of what might be drawn from these objects but are offered as a starting point for conversation and further study.

James Akerman (Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University) is Director of the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography and Curator of Maps at the Newberry Library, Chicago. He has taught, curated online and physical exhibits, and published widely in the history of cartography. His research and publications primarily concern the history of travel mapping, popular cartography, and atlases. He is the editor or co-editor of five collections of scholarly essays, most recently, Decolonizing the Map (University of Chicago Press, 2017). He serves as a Trustee of the International Society for the History of the Map; and is member of the Board of Directors for Imago Mundi, Ltd., and the Boards of Review for the Osher Map Library and the Leventhal Map and Education Center.

You are invited to a Zoom meeting.
When: April 22, 2021 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Register in advance for this meeting:
https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIscuyqqjstEtPXaJn2HZoyz8Z8re0joSbA

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

MONDAY 17 MAY 2021

(Sponsored in partnership with the Boston, California, Chicago, New York, Philip Lee Phillips, Rocky Mountain, and Texas Map Societies).

Location: Zoom, 7:00 PM ET/6:00 PM CT/ 5:00 PM MT/4:00 PM PT

Title: Tilting Washington’s National Mall

Speaker: Matthew Gilmore. Washington, DC, author, columnist, speaker, and blogger.

One of the major decisions the Senate Park (or McMillan) Commission made in 1901 was to create a new centerline for the National Mall, around which to shape its design. Instead of drawing it directly east/west from the Capitol, continuing the line of East Capitol Street, they deflected it southward to pass through the Washington Monument. This was to cope with the design flaw of the misplaced Washington Monument. This was not entirely new... a few others seem to have considered this as a solution before the Commission did. But most other planners had a raft of other ideas whether to or how to cope with the "misplacement" of the Washington Monument, generally designing around it, but not reorienting the entire landscape.This new centerline (and the width of the Mall proposed by the Commission) became a key design element and determined the location and (even) design of the buildings on the Mall--including the Department of Agriculture and the New National Museum (now the National Museum of Natural history). It was a factor in the location of the Grant Memorial. It determined the location of the Lincoln Memorial. In the process, the highest politicians in the land were involved. And ultimately, President Theodore Roosevelt was required to make the decisive move to enforce it.

THURSDAY 24 JUNE 2021

(Sponsored in partnership with the Boston, California, Chicago, New York, Philip Lee Phillips, Rocky Mountain, and Texas Map Societies).

Location: Zoom, 7:00 PM ET/6:00 PM CT/ 5:00 PM MT/4:00 PM PT

Title: “nearly in a circular form”: Mapping the Cherokee Nation through John Marrant’s Narrative (1785)

Speaker: Leah Thomas, Assistant Professor of English, Virginia State University, and Editor, The Portolan.

Comparing contemporaneous maps of the southeastern United States with John Marrant’s narrative mapping in his A Narrative of the Lord’s Wonderful Dealings with John Marrant, a Black (London, 1785) offers insight into his location and travel especially among the Cherokee and their networks. Taken into captivity by the Cherokee, Marrant is saved by the Chief’s daughter, echoing John Smith’s The Generall Historie (1624) during a pivotal moment in the colonial contest in the Southeast. Living among the Cherokee for approximately two years, Marrant hunted and traveled with them. His narrative mapping reflects the mapping in the 1720s deerskin maps attributed to the Catawba and Chickasaw that may have been of Cherokee origin. Marrant’s travel with the Cherokee during the 1760s reveals emergent settler tensions with the Cherokee from their friendship with the British and negotiations with South Carolina Governor Francis Nicholson in the 1720s to their removal in the 1830s.