SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

OFFICE OF ACADEMIC AFFAIRS

2010 CURRICULUM VITAE UPDATE FORM

Mark Monmonier Maxwell / Geography .

Name of Faculty Member School or College/Department

In describing your activities during the 2010 calendar year, reflect on how they have contributed to the
University’s mission and vision.

I. Teaching Contribution: Courses Taught Enrollment

Spring 2010 on leave

Fall 2010
Geo 381 (Cartographic Design) 16
Geo 602 (Research Design) 9
Geo 681 (Map Design) 1

(a) Improvements in teaching and learning, curriculum, or course design; participation in programs or
conferences related to teaching; program or course assessment:
Further adjustments to Geo 602: new readings (not always successful, though) and a
new approach to the class’s examination of principles outlined in Williams, Style:
Toward Clarity and Grace (noticeably improvement compared to last year, when I
first taught 602).
Revised exercises for Geo 381/681, with new source materials and including the
addition of cartographic details to an image (digital terrain base map, air photo, or
scanned historical map). Decreased use of PowerPoint to allow more time for in-class
discussion. Improved demonstration of the principles of map projection using the
newly released version of GeoCart.

(b) Advising students, thesis or dissertation supervision; informal work with students or student groups;
methods for assessing and improving your effectiveness:
Tracy Edwards (my advisee since the late 1990s) successfully defended her M.A.
thesis. (Tracy’s slow and intermittent progress reflected getting married, having two
children, and teaching five or more courses per semester as an adjunct at Frostburg
University, in Maryland. It was gratifying to see her complete the degree—nice thesis
too.)
Chaired and participated (as committee member) in Elaine Kovacs’ M.A. defense.
 Ph.D. committee member for Claudia Asch, Ingrid Butler, Jacob Shell, and Katie Wells,
all in Geography; Matt Hidek, in Social Science; and Janet Marsden, in the School of
Information Studies.

(c) Recognition and awards for teaching or advising:

Nothing exceptional. A few nice e-mails and in-person comments at the end of the
semester from students in Geo 381 and Geo 602.

(d) Integration of research into teaching:

Drew upon cartographic illustrations for current and recent projects for lecture
material for Geo 381/681. Drew upon research experiences, including grant writing,
for discussions in Geo 602. Set aside materials throughout the year (especially from
the History of Cartography project) to enhance Geo 314 (Hazardous Geographical
Environments) and Geo 388/688 (Geographic Information and Society) for Spring
2011.

II. Research, Creative and Professional Activities:

(a) Work published, patents issued, recitals and exhibitions during calendar year 2010:

BOOK: No Dig, No Fly, No Go: How Maps Restrict and Control (Univ. of Chicago Press,
2010). ISBN-13 (cloth): 978-0-226-53467-1; ISBN-13 (paper): 978-0-226-53468-8.
ARTICLE: “Divide and Exploit,” Kartographische Nachrichten 60.1 (January/February
2010): 3-11.
ARTICLE: “I Know Where You Are Right Now,” New Scientist 207.2767 (July 3, 2010):
30-31.

(b) Work accepted for future publication during calendar year 2010:

BOOK IN TRANSLATION (forthcoming, perhaps in 2012): A letter from the University

of Chicago Press, dated June 1, indicated that a Chinese-language translation of How
to Lie with Maps has been licensed to a firm named Commercial Press and “should be
published within the next two years.”
BOOK CHAPTER (forthcoming in January 2011, I am told): “Maps as Graphic
Propaganda for Public Health.” In David Serlin, ed., Imagining Illness: Public Health
and Visual Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011). [My chapter
had been accepted by Serlin several years ago but it was only this past year that the
overall project received the go-ahead at the University of Minnesota Press.]
BOOK CHAPTER (forthcoming in 2011): “2,500 words excerpted from pages 4-14 in
Technological Transition in Cartography, for Martin Dodge, ed., The Map Reader
(Chichester: Wiley, 2011). [I signed a permission waiver; copyright to this 1985 book
 reverted to me several years ago when the University of Wisconsin Press allowed it
to go out of print.]
BOOK CHAPTER (forthcoming in January 2011, I am told): “Reflection Essay:
‘Strategies for the Visualization of Geographic Time-series Data’.” In Martin Dodge,
ed., Classics in Cartography: Reflections on Influential Articles from Cartographica
(London: John Wiley & Sons, 2011), pp. 71–79.

(c) Work submitted for publication, technology transfer disclosures, and progress made on unpublished work
during calendar year 2010:

BOOK CHAPTER SUBMITTED: (accepted by editor of multi-author work; although the

collection has not yet been placed with a publisher, Routledge is reported to be
looking at the prospectus; publication seems unlikely before 2012): “Maps That Say
‘No!’: The Intensification of Prohibitive Cartography in the Twentieth Century,” for
Todd Kenreich, ed., Geography, Power and Justice: New Directions in the Classroom.
PROGRESS ON BOOK: While on leave during the spring 2010 semester, I made
significant progress on a new book on the systematic recognition, prediction, and
impact of lake-effect snowfall. An interpretative synthesis based largely on archival
research, the book will have seven chapters: Recipe / Discovery / Prediction /
Coping / Records / [Climate] Change / Place. During 2010 I completed reasonably well
polished drafts of four chapters, and a fifth chaper should reach the same level of
completion by the beginning of the spring 2011 semester. I plan to write the last two
chapters before the end of May. I kept up with the preparation of illustrations
throughout the year, and now have finished artwork for 51 illustrations. This count
includes maps drafted with Adobe Illustrator, facsimile maps scanned and cleaned up
in Photoshop, and two photographs taken by me and enhanced with Photoshop.
PROGRESS ON ENCYLOPEDIA: I am the editor of Volume Six (The Twentieth Century)
of The History of Cartography, a one-million word, 1,500-page scholarly reference
work under contract at the University of Chicago Press and supported by a grant
from the National Science Foundation. Volume Six is on track for publication in 2014,
and I anticipate having all 523 entries received, vetted, and forwarded to the project
office at the University of Wisconsin—Madison for further editorial processing by the
end of August 2011. The NSF approved the annual progress report submitted at the
end of May 2010. I recruited two additional associate editors to compensate for
slower than anticipated progress by the two associate editors taken on two years
ago, when we received our second five-year NSF grant. As of mid-December 2010,
519 of 523 assignable entries were under contract—some contributors had their
contracts terminated because of poor quality work or a failure to deliver, and
replacements were still being sought—477 entries had been received, and 426 had
been edited, accepted, and sent forward to Madison for further editorial processing.
ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRIES WRITTEN: During 2010 I wrote six new entries for the
aforementioned Volume Six (The Twentieth Century) of The History of Cartography:
“Conferences on Computer-aided Mapping” / “Display Hardware” / “Facilities Map” /
 “Landscape Architecture and Cartography” / “Metric System” / “Styles,
Cartographic.”

(d) Other professional activities (such as active grants, proposals submitted, editorial boards, peer review
committees, invited lectures, conference papers):
Active grants:
National Science Foundation, No. SES-0749687, “Collaborative Research: History
of Cartography in the Twentieth Century,” 1 September 2008 to 31 August 2013,
$355,130 (funded jointly by the Science and Society Program and the Geography
and Regional Science Program). Funds are released on a year-by-year basis,
pending submission of a satisfactory annual report. My report submitted on 26
May 2010, was followed on 5 June by the program officer’s decision to release the
$88,781 slated for Year Three (1 September 2010 to 31 August 2011). The report I
wrote also led to the release of Year Three funds to my collaborator, the project
office in Madison, under the direction of Matthew H. Edney.
Proposals submitted (grant awarded but not yet active):
Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, support for a research assistant (summer and
fall 2011) for Volume Six of the History of Cartography, $12,000. Proposal
requesting $12,370 was submitted on 2 November. SU received word on 19
November that we would be funded at $12,000 for the period 15 May 2011 to 15
May 2012.
Editorial boards:
Coordinates (Online Journal of the Map and Geography Round Table, American
Library Assn.)
Board of Advisors, Volume Five: Cartography in the Nineteenth Century, History of
Cartography Project.
Peer review committees: none
Invited lectures:
College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA: “Fear and Loathing in Geopolitics:
Cartographies of Pretension and Persuasion,” in the Geopolitics Fall Lecture Series
AND a presentation to a class titled “How to Lie with Maps,” in the Department of
Government, both on November 12.
Conference papers:
“Aeronautical Charting and the Production, Reproduction, and Regulation of
Airspace by the United States,” on April 17 in Washington, DC, at the annual
meeting of the Association of American Geographers.
“Prohibitive Cartography, ZIP Codes, and Borrowed Borders,” on November 2 in
Bird Library’s Faculty Collaborative Research Colloquium on “1930s Redlining
Maps from the Home Owners Loan Corporation.”
(e) Recognition of published works, recitals and exhibitions (such as awards and prizes; reviews in journals;
references in papers, books, symposia):
Book discussion/signing of No Dig, No Fly, No Go, on September 30, at Barnes &
Noble, DeWitt.
No Dig, No Fly, No Go, released in May, has apparently not been out sufficiently
long for reviews to appear in scholarly journals. However, the June 15 issue of
Library Journal included a short review in which Edward K. Werner concluded,
“This insightful study is recommended for general readers and students with an
interest in cartography and is suitable for academic and public libraries.” In July a
notably longer H-NET review by Richard Harris (senior lecturer in the School of
Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol) concluded, “The book is
excellent and scholarly throughout, well written for anyone who is interested in
the importance of maps in society and on the world stage. It should be required
reading for all students of geography and is a highly recommended addition to the
Monmonier canon.” On August 26 the Times Higher Education Supplement ran a
muddled rant by Joni Seager, who ignored the goal laid out in the Preface and the
Introduction—the thesis that prohibitive cartography emerged and intensified
largely during the twentieth century—and chided me for “not directly engag[ing]
debates” on power and agency. That same month the Times Literary Supplement
provided Simon Reid-Henry a platform for asserting, “Monmonier, it seems, has
set out to explore some highly politicized terrain in this book without himself
being quite as interested in the politics as in the maps themselves.” Duh. In
August veteran political geographer Victor Prescott took me to task in The Globe
[Journal of The Australian Map Circle] for not acknowledging his precise definitions
of border, border zone, frontier, and boundary but concluded, “These quibbles
aside, there can be no doubt that Monmonier’s examination of various types of
domestic [in contrast to international] boundaries will provide guidance for the
production of many major and minor theses. Certainly many teachers and lectures
will want to use this volume as a textbook.”
A Web of Science citation search on January 3, 2011 identified 979 articles,
reports or other publications that cite a work by “Monmonier M*”—up from 837
citations found on January 8, 2010; 759 citations found on December 26, 2008;
and 708 noted on January 3, 2008. A small fraction of these are self-citations.
There is no indication of whether authors citing my work found it useful, brilliant,
flawed, or merely convenient for inflating a bibliography.
On January 3, 2010 the Edmonton (Alberta) Journal ran a feature article titled “A
Year of Good Reading,” in which various staffers recommended a favorite book.
Business editor Paul Cashman picked my Air Apparent: How Meteorologists
Learned to Map, Predict and Dramatize Weather (1999). Cashman’s blurb
concluded, “This book is 10 years old and includes some unadulterated science,
but it will give you a better appreciation of what we know about weather and how
we learned it.”
III. Service to Department, College, University, Profession and the Community:

For the department:

As a member of the Chair’s Advisory Committee, I participated actively—though
on leave—in the annual faculty performance evaluation in February, and also in
the evaluation of pre-proposals. (The latter was not much work, as I recall; just
one proposal, but an excellent one, fortunately.)
Mentoring committee chair for final departmental report on Bob Wilson’s tenure
case. (I wrote the section on research and assembled the final report.)
James Library Committee, October 2008 – April 2010.

For the university:

Advisory Board, Black Syracuse History and Community Mapping Project, African
American Studies Department, Syracuse University.
Bookstore Advisory Committee.

For the profession:

One of five judges for the Bizarre Map Challenge, announced in January 2010,
judged in April, and coordinated by San Diego State University and the NSF-
funded Center of Excellence for Geospatial Technology (GeoTech Center:
http://www.geotechcenter.org/).
Reviewed MS for Cartographic Perspectives and an internal essay on place names
for National Geographic. (Because the demands of Volume Six of the History of
Cartography have drastically reduced discretionary time, I generally decline
invitations to review proposals or articles for agencies that are not funding the
project or for journals for which I am not a member of the editorial board.)
Commission on Maps and the Internet (International Cartographic Association),
corresponding member.
Commission on the History of Cartography (International Cartographic
Association), corresponding member.
International Commission on the History of Meteorology, member.

For the community:

Advisory Board, Black Syracuse History and Community Mapping Project, African
American Studies Department, Syracuse University.
Revised: December 07, 2010