Michelle McGowan (Haverford College)

This panel explores new scholarly perspectives on cartographies and maps as they appear in Latin American literary and visual cultural production. Drawing on J.B. Harley’s influential argument that “maps are never neutral”, we seek to examine how geographic representations, both real and imaginary, become political interventions.

In Latin America, cartographic practices have been inextricably linked with colonial expansion, territorial disputes, resource extraction, and nation-building projects. Maps of rainforests, borderlands, islands, deserts, and highlands are often framed in the context of discourses of civilization vs. barbarism, center vs. periphery, and progress vs. decline, among others. As such, these representations are central to discussions of nationalism, coloniality and postcoloniality, ethnic and regional politics, ecological practices, migration, and violence.

Papers in this panel will address how contemporary works reinterpret these cartographic imaginaries and reshape traditional understandings of territory and geographical representation. We invite scholarship that engages with literature, film, photography, digital media, performance, or visual art to illuminate how maps, whether material or symbolic, mediate relationships between people and place.

Papers may address, but are not limited to, the following questions:

• How do maps—real, symbolic, or imaginary—affect our understanding of historical and contemporary identities?

• In what ways do literary and visual works resist, rewrite, or subvert official mapping practices and empower marginalized communities?

• How can we move beyond nationalist and/or colonial frameworks in our approaches to cartographic representations in Latin American cultural productions?

• How do indigenous or Afro-descendant mapping practices reshape understandings of geography and spatial knowledge?

• What new insights emerge when we consider mapping as a narrative, aesthetic, or political act rather than a neutral source of information?

Latin American cultural works use cartographic representation to reveal how maps function as political tools shaped by colonialism, nationalism, and territorial struggle. This panel examines how contemporary literature and visual media reinterpret these mapping practices to challenge dominant narratives and highlight marginalized spatial perspectives. It invites scholarship that explores how imaginary geographies and alternative mapping practices reshape relationships between people, place, and power.