Database of Maps in Literature and Cinema

Here is a very interesting initiative from Giacomo Andreucci, Post-Doctoral fellow from Università di Bologna who is developing a database of maps appearing in literature, as well as in movies and TV productions.

The project Maps in Literature makes freely accessible to students and researchers a literary corpus of text quotations of maps ranging from the ancient classic world literature to the contemporary one. The project is meant as an open initiative and everyone interested in suggesting new quotations can contribute. To contribute please contact us at contributions@mapsinliterature.it

I am interested in Giacomo’s project because I have also been gathering cinematic map for about a decade. My favorite ones are the one from M (Fritz Lang 1931)  (as I believe it is the first “modern” map as it prefigures many of the current functions of contemporary digital cartography) as well as the one from Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) (as it forshadowed zooming capabilities and “jump” effect of contemporary Virtual Globes). I also like The Marauders Map from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Alfredo Cuarón 2004) as it clearly embodies the surveillance potential of digital cartography, and the “Big Board” in Dr Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick, 1964), just because I love this movie.

I discuss these cinemaps and many others in an upcoming special issue of the Cartographic Journal dedicated to Cinematic Cartography (forthcoming May 2009). This collection will include some very interesting papers written by Teresa Castro, Tom Conley, Bill Cartwright and Thierry Joliveau (who has a great blog on geospatial technologies).Questo indirizzo e-mail è protetto dallo spam bot. Abilita Javascript per vederlo.
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