The Intersection of Maps and History is a six-week course in cartographic history and visual analysis featuring the extensive (and largely digitized) cartographic collections of the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education at the University of Southern Maine. Co-taught by the Osher Map Library's executive director, faculty scholar, and reference and teaching librarian, this visually-rich online course will introduce participants to the history of cartography as a discipline and engage in deep visual analysis of maps and related ephemera. Over the course of our semester, we invite participants to take a deep dive with us into topics at the intersection of maps and history, such as the History of Cartography project; schoolgirl maps of the early-19th century; the history of mapping in color; city, town, and county maps and genealogical research; mapping and World War I; 20th-century pictorial maps, and more. Each session will feature an engaging illustrated topical lecture, and a lively Q and A session with the instructors. If you ever wanted to know more about how historic maps can serve as an illuminating window into historical eras, events, and topics, this is the course for you.

Instructors: Dr. Libby Bischof is executive director of the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education and professor of history and university historian at the University of Southern Maine. A visual and cultural historian of the 19th- and 20th-centuries, Bischof is interested in the ways in which friendship informs cultural production, especially in relation to landscape and place. A public historian, Bischof believes deeply in site-based, hands-on education, and the ways in which teaching local and regional history can lead to deeper civic engagement. She frequently lectures to public audiences throughout New England, and serves on the board of the New England Historical Association and as president of the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium.

Dr. Matthew Edney is Osher professor in the History of Cartography, Osher Map Library Faculty Scholar, and professor of geography at the University of Southern Maine, and director, History of Cartography Project, University of Wisconsin–Madison. He edited, with Mary Pedley, Cartography in the European Enlightenment (2019), volume four of The History of Cartography. He is broadly interested in early modern and modern mapping practices, especially in imperial contexts (Mapping an Empire [1997]), and in the conceptual foundations of mapping and map

history. His most recent book is Cartography: The Ideal and Its History (Chicago, 2019). He blogs at mappingasprocess.net.

Louis Miller is the cartographic reference and teaching librarian at the University of Southern Maine’s Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education. Prior to his current role he worked for five years at the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan, primarily with the manuscript, graphics, and map collections. He published his research article "'Honor For All'? Commemoration of the First World War in Kalamazoo," in volume 45, no. 2 of the Michigan Historical Review (Fall 2019) and continues to work on a larger project focusing on mourning and loss in the American Expeditionary Forces. Course dates are Fridays, April 12, 19, 26, May 3, 10, and 17.