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Academic Cartography
Robert McMaster and Susanna McMaster
ABSTRACT: The academic discipline of cartography is a twentieth-century phenomenon. From its
incipient roots in landscape representation in geology and the mapping of socio-economic data in
geography, it grew into its own sub-discipline with graduate programs, research paradigms, and a
scientific literature of its own. It came close to establishing a national center for cartography in the
late 1960s. After rather sporadic activity before World War II, the period from 1946 to 1986 saw
the building of major graduate programs at the universities of Wisconsin, Kansas, and Washington.
Other programs were created, often with the doctoral students from those three. At the end of the
twentieth century, cartography underwent significant changes in relation to the emerging discipline
of geographic information science. The future for academic cartography is less certain, as graduate
programs adjust the balances among the many components of mapping science, including cartography,
geovisualization, GI science, GIS systems, spatial analysis/statistics, and remote sensing.
KEYWORDS: John Paul Goode, Erwin Raisz, Richard Edes Harrison, Arthur Robinson, George Jenks,
John Sherman, Waldo Tobler, analytical cartography
T
Introduction 1991). This particular issue of CaGIS detailed
the earlier programs at Wisconsin, Kansas, and
his paper details the history and devel- Washington, as well as those at the universities
opment of U.S. academic cartography in of South Carolina, Northern Illinois, Southwest
the twentieth century. Although one can Texas State, Michigan State, Oregon State, Penn
find formal education in cartography dating back State, SUNY at Buffalo, Ohio State, Syracuse, and
to the nineteenth century, including coursework Minnesota. Histories of other significant programs,
at Princeton and the United States Military and including UCLA, the University of California at
Naval Academies, the building of core programs Santa Barbara, Clark University, University of
and faculty is a relatively new development. As Georgia, San Diego State University, and George
pointed out in 1987, “Academic cartography in the Mason University, remain to be told.
United States is largely a twentieth-century phe- The scope of this paper does not allow documen-
nomenon, although it builds on an earlier founda- tation of the very rich cartographic activity in other
tion of governmental, service academy, and private countries such as the United Kingdom, France, the
map making” (McMaster and Thrower 1987, p. Netherlands, the former Soviet Union, and China.
345). Since that publication there has been little We leave the identification, documentation, and
research on how this discipline grew from a single analysis of such programs to those more knowledge-
individual, J. Paul Goode at the University of able about their significance. We also constrain this
Chicago, to one of the more significant influences paper to a particular approach—that of identifying
in academic geography. One exception is the 1991 and documenting key individuals and programs in
United States National Report to the International academic cartography. Our approach is to carefully
Cartographic Association, entitled “History and document the individuals, programs, and some of the
Development of Academic Cartography in the cartographic events, providing interpretation where
United States” and published in Cartography and possible; it is not a “critical history” that proposes
Geographic Information Systems (CaGIS) (McMaster multiple realities of these events.
Further research will allow for a deeper analysis
Robert McMaster is Professor of Geography in the Department of this history and a careful documentation of the
of Geography at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN linkages among the various intellectual threads. One
55455. Email:<mcmaster@umn.edu>. Susanna McMaster is example would be to critically evaluate the paradigm
Associate Program Director of the MGIS Program in the Department of experimental cartography that is detailed briefly
of Geography at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN in this paper and expanded on in Daniel Montello’s
55455. Email:<smcmaster@geog.umn.edu>. paper in this volume. From its roots with Arthur
Cartography and Geographic Information Science, Vol. 29, No. 3, 2002, pp. 305-321
Robinson’s The Look of Maps (1950) to its dominance as
a research paradigm—particularly at the Universities The Incipient Period (1900-1940)
of Wisconsin, Kansas, and Washington—to a significant > J. Paul Goode
decrease in its emphasis in the late 1980s, a critical > Erwin Raisz
assessment of its dissemination and true impact on > Guy-Harold Smith
> Richard Edes Harrison
the field is needed. We also note that the emphasis
in this paper focuses on thematic cartography, and The Post War Era of Core Graduate
we do not delve into the education of topographic Programs (1940-1985)
cartographers, surveyors, or remote sensing specialists. > University of Wisconsin
Although the main development of thematic mapping > University of Kansas
can be traced to nineteenth-century Europe, it is in > University of Washington
the twentieth-century United States that thematic
Secondary Programs (1975-1990)
cartography evolved as an academic discipline. It > UCLA
is this unique history that focuses on thematic and > University of Michigan
statistical cartography—and the education of indi- > University of South Carolina
viduals in these fields—that we document. > Syracuse University
The Paradigms of American Waldo Tobler (Figure 5) originated (in the 1960s)
and nurtured (in the 1970s and 1980s) the idea
Cartography of mathematical, transformational, or analytical
In the post World War II period, as academi- approach to the subject. Tobler laid out the agenda
cally oriented graduate programs emerged, basic for an analytical cartography in his seminal 1976
research in cartography accelerated. Although paper, “Analytical Cartography,” published in the
many research paradigms could be documented, American Cartographer. This paper, and Tobler’s
some of the more substantial efforts were in com- ideas, had a profound effect on American aca-
munication models, a theory of symbolization and demic cartography.
design, cartographic design, experimental cartog- What exactly is an “analytical cartography”?
raphy, analytical cartography, and the recent series Kimerling, in his 1989 Geography in America review
of debates in critical and social cartography. Table of cartography, describes it as “the mathematical
4 provides some of the key research activities asso- concepts and methods underlying cartography, and
ciated with these paradigms, each of which has a their application in map production and the solu-
unique and complex history, dissemination, and tion of geographic problems” (Kimerling 1989, p.
set of outcomes. The final section of the paper 697), which includes the topics of cartographic data
focuses on the evolution of just one paradigm, ana- models, digital cartographic data collection methods
lytical cartography. and standards, coordinate transformations, and map
projections, geographic data interpolation, analyti-
cal generalization, and numerical map analysis and
Analytical Cartography interpretation. Tobler’s original syllabus describes a
If any one paradigm within cartography has an series of topics steeped in theory and mathematics.
“intellectual leader,” it is analytical cartography. His goal for the course is futuristic:
University of Wisconsin—Madison:
Beth Freundlich
Jude Leimer
Teresita Reed
Paul Tierney