Organizer: Sean Fraga
“Mapping Mobilities” is a year-long works-in-progress series focused on map-based representations of mobilities and immobilities. As both objects of study and methods of analysis, “mapping” and “mobility” can take many different forms. Mobility is a capacious category, encompassing everything from the “large-scale movements of people, objects, capital and information” to the local movement of people and things within the scale of daily life (Hannam, Sheller, and Urry 2006). Maps, similarly capacious, include textual descriptions, static cartographic representations, responsive place-based media, geographic databases, and other forms of spatial communication. Mapping offers one possible way of describing dynamic mobility patterns that can be abstract, obscure, or difficult to read in static sources. At each meeting, we discuss two works-in-progress that grapple with these questions.
The workshop is organized by Sean Fraga, USC Mellon Humanities in a Digital World Fellow (2020-2022). To learn more about future events, please sign up for the workshop email list. Please contact Sean Fraga, sfraga@usc.edu, with any questions.
Workshop Schedule
Sessions will be held over Zoom unless otherwise noted.
Register by 5pm (PT) the day before the event to receive pre-circulated materials.
Wednesday, October 28, 3pm–4pm (PT)
“Mapping from Below: Charting out the Latinx Historical and Quotidian Presence in Metropolitan Los Angeles,” Jorge N. Leal, University of California, Riverside
“Mapping the Metropolis: Transportation Networks in Public Art,” Ruth Wallach, USC Libraries
Wednesday, November 18, 1pm–2pm (PT)
“Mobilities of Buddhist architectural motifs along the Silk Road,” Di Luo, Connecticut College
“Commodities of Colonialism: American Merchants and Indian Policy,” Dan Wallace, USC
Thursday, January 21, 2pm–3pm (PT)
“Traversing Racial Landscapes: Mapping Space, Race and Indigeneity in Los Angeles,” Michelle Vasquez Ruiz, USC
“A Borderland in Imperial Networks: Aeolis in the Hellenistic World,” Ryan Horne, Sinai Manuscripts Digital Library, UCLA
Tuesday, February 16, 2pm–3pm (PT)
“Maps and Legends: Expanding Imagined Geographies in a Museum Context,” Josh Garrett-Davis, Autry Museum of the American West
“Mapping Ancient History: Patterns of Living in Seleucid Northern Syria,” Deirdre Klokow, USC
Tuesday, March 16, 2pm–3pm (PT)
“Vehicles of Development: The International Harvester Company and the Remaking of Philippine Nationalism,” Karlynne Ejercito, American Studies and Ethnicity, USC
“Cruising Empire: Sex, Mobility, and Leisure in 20th-Century Tourism,” Stanley Fonseca, USC
Tuesday, April 13, 2pm–3pm (PT)
“Bunker Hill Refrain: Mapping the Social Cost of a Planning Idea,” Meredith Drake Reitan, USC
“Times Up: the Effects of Structural Racism and Capitalism on Emergency Department Access in Major US Cities,” Shea-Ellen Gilliam, USC
Tuesday, May 4, 1pm–2pm (PT)
“Place, Space and Time,” John Wilson, USC
“Pesquisas (Searches): Mapping Ethnic Mexican Attachment in 1910s Texas,” Laura Isabel Serna, USC
