Today much of what is happening in literary, cultural, and theoretical studies points to the art of mapmaking as a fundamental paradigm. Our course explores the role of this renewed interst in cartography in both literature and the arts, and attempts to produce a conceptual framework for the definition of mapmaking as a cultural and material production. From a random walk through the city to the massive attacks out of global capitalism, the guiding question is how cultural practices make sense out of our actual conditions of existence. To address this issue, we will not only read a number of novels, short stories, essays, and theoretical statements but also engage in a close study of recent artworks and the development of what some critics consider to be nothing short of a “cartographic turn” in literature and the arts today.
