Imago Mundi

Maps and the Imagination

By exploring the map-imagination nexus, this issue engages questions ranging from the practical to the philosophical: What do maps do for acts of creativity, and conversely, what does the imagination want from maps? How do maps help making and knowing imagined selves and communities? How does the image, rhetoric, and materiality of maps influence creative practices, be it for imagining social and political contexts, or for texts creating compelling stories ranging from classic epics and romance fiction to fantasy novels and climate fiction? How do methods and theories of historical cartography and forms of imagined thinking complement each other? How have the materiality and technology of mapmaking informed imagined subjects and subjectivities, and conversely how do expressions of the imagination allow us to rethink the nature of maps?

Given the widespread use, even inevitability, of the map-imagination nexus, it is timely to reconsider the history of mapping in relation to the production and consumption of fantasy and fancy, fiction and other imagined forms as it was and is practiced in global and multi-disciplinary contexts. The Special Issue invites proposals that consider the relationship between maps and the imagination that address:

• Substance and Materiality: paper, movie screens, computers, and other platforms for creative mapping
• Transfer and Dissemination: places, spaces, boundaries, communities
• Invention and Narration: world-making, histories, dreams, knowledge
• Agency and Performance: bodies, movement, animation, theater, play