2023 “Maps & America” Arthur Holzheimer Lecture

Karen Lewis, chair of Undergraduate Studies in Architecture and associate professor of architecture at Ohio State University, presents the 2023 “Maps & America”: Arthur Holzheimer Lecture on Thursday, May 4, 2023 at 6 p.m. in the American Geographical Society Library, located on the third floor of the UWM Golda Meir Library.

The title of her talk is “Unquiet Journeys:  Mapping the Underground Railroad.”

Dr. Lewis’s research and teaching address how visual and information systems shape the architectural, territorial and infrastructural space they create and inhabit.

Currently, Professor Lewis’s research explores the ways the Underground Railroad is described across space and interpretation, using architectural representation to propose critical counter-narratives. Her visualizations of the Underground Railroad was featured in 2022 in Crossings: Mapping American Journeys, an exhibition at the Newberry Library, which visualized three stories of men and women who escaped slavery and created their Underground Railroads.

This hybrid presentation will share the research, mapping, and graphic tools employed by Professor Lewis, mapping and visualizing the embedded narratives. By expanding archival narratives, researching historical maps and records, and linking architectural, topographic, and urban conditions across current landscapes, the mapping project gives insight into both the performance of those who created their paths out of slavery, as well as cartographic tools that engage research, design and audience participation.

There will be a reception at 5:30 p.m.

Registration is required for this event. Please choose between in-person or virtual attendance by registering here.

This will be the 33rd annual presentation in the Maps & America: Arthur Holzheimer Lecture series, organized by the American Geographical Society Library and supported by an endowment created by Arthur and Janet Holzheimer.

The lecture series was inaugurated by the noted cartographic historian, Brian Harley, in 1990. Over the years, the series has featured many of the leading figures in the field of map history and provided a multifaceted survey of this rapidly developing field.