Matthew H. Edney: brief C.V.
University Education
B.Sc. (hons; first-class). Geography. University College London, University of London. 1983
M.S. Cartography. University of Wisconsin–Madison. 1985
Ph.D. Geography. University of Wisconsin–Madison. 1990
Academic Employment
State University of New York at Binghamton
Assistant Professor. Department of Geography. 1990–1995
University of Southern Maine, Portland
Osher Professor in the History of Cartography (endowed chair). 2007–date
Faculty member in department of Geography-Anthropology and program in American & New England Studies (latter until program discontinued in 2014): associate professor, 1995–2008; professor, 2008–date.
Faculty Scholar. Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education. 1995–date
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Visiting Associate Professor. Program in American Culture. 2004–2005
University of Wisconsin–Madison
https://geography.wisc.edu/histcart/
Director, History of Cartography Project. Department of Geography. 2005–date
Associate Scientist. 2005–2012
Senior Scientist/Scientist III. 2012–date
Affiliated faculty. Department of Geography. 2009–date
Rare Book School, University of Virginia, Charlottesville
Instructor for H-65, “Material Foundations of Map History, 1450–1900.” 2022–date
Recent and Current Scholarship
Note: see the classified bibliography on this site for full listing of all publications, organized by area and period of scholarship, with PDFs for most essays.
My scholarship over the past couple of decades has focused on the eighteenth-century, culminating in the publication by the University of Chicago Press in early 2020 of Cartography in the European Enlightenment, volume 4 of The History of Cartography, which I edited with Mary S. Pedley (University of Michigan).
An Historical Study of Mapping
Currently, I am focused on a large project featuring three(?) largely stand-alone volumes. Together they constitute a whole that I think of as “An Historical Study of Mapping.” The overall concern is to explain what is “mapping” such that we can study its history. The volumes are:
1) Cartography: The Ideal and Its History, which was published by the University of Chicago Press in April 2019. This book explores the idealization of “cartography,” its inherent failings, and its history. See the link in the pull-down “Books” menu for more information.
2) The Map: Concepts and Histories is the work I am currently writing. It uses an historiographical approach to explain how map scholars have created different map concepts—generized understandings of “the map”—to sustain their scholarship. That is, the concept of “map” itself has a history. Most recently, map historians led the charge to reconceptualize maps as cultural documents and social instruments, but they have done so in an incomplete and flawed manner.
As this book has moved away from a more focused historiography of the field of “the history of cartography,” I’ve been pushing historiographical essays into journals and this blog.
3) Mapping: Process and Histories will address, finally, how mapping functions (as processeses of semiosis, discourse, and performance) and the implications of this approach for studying maps and their history. The core point in a “processual” approach is that maps themselves are epiphenomena of mapping processes: before one can interpret or analyze a map, one must understand the formations within which it was produced, circulated, and consumed.
Public Lectures and Presentations
I maintain an active speaking schedule, both for public groups in Maine and New England and for more academic, map historical audiences. To give a sense of the variety of audiences, the following are the groups to whom I’ve been speaking, in person and virtually, in 2022–23:
Academic Presentations, selected by peer review:
• International Society for the History of the Map, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin (July 2023)
• International Symposium on “Conquering the World through Cartography,” ICA Commission on the History of Cartography. Belgian Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences (May 2023)
• 29th International Conference on the History of Cartography, Bucharest (July 2022)
Invited Academic Presentations:
• Nell Ward Lecture. Touchton Map Library, Tampa Bay History Center. (October 2023)
• Kislak Center, Otto G. Richter Library, University of Miami (May 2023)
• Workshop on Typologies of East Asian Maps in a Global Perspective. Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, Universität Hamburg (December 2022)
• Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, Winston-Salem, NC (October 2022)
• Occasional Lecture for the Society for the History of Discoveries (April 2022)
• Mapping the Pacific. State Library of New South Wales, Sydney (March 2022)
Public groups (significantly reduced by covid, so going back into 2020):
• Friends of the Tate House Museum, Portland (September 2023)
• Scarborough Historical Society. Scarborough, Maine (June and September 2021)
• Chicago Map Society (April 2021)
• Friends of Merrymeeting Bay and Curtis Memorial Library, Brunswick, Maine (February 2020)
