Bookshelf

Alumni and faculty members who would like to have their books considered for this listing should contact Stacey Himmelberger, editor of Hamilton magazine. This list, which dates back to 2018, is updated periodically with books appearing alphabetically on the date of entry.

Against the Map: The Politics of Geography in Eighteenth-Century Britain by Adam Sills ’91

March 1, 2022

Tags Alumni Book

(Charlottesville, Va.: University of Virginia Press, 2021)
According to the publisher, “Over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries, the increasing accuracy and legibility of cartographic projections, the proliferation of empirically based chorographies, and the popular vogue for travel narratives served to order, package, and commodify space in a manner that was critical to the formation of a unified Britain. In tandem with such developments, however, a trenchant anti-cartographic skepticism also emerged. This critique of the map can be seen in many literary works of the period that satirize the efficacy and value of maps and highlight their ideological purposes.”

The author, an associate professor of English at Hofstra University, argues that our understanding of the production of national space during this time must also account for these sites of resistance and opposition to hegemonic forms of geographical representation, such as the map.