| Credits | 1 |
| Restrictions | No 2028 2027 |
| Pre-Requisites | Students may not take more than 1 CORE Sciences course |
| Co-Requisites | |
| Core Area | Sciences |
| Area of Inquiry | |
| Liberal Arts Practices |
Introduces students to the field of cartography, or the science of mapmaking, while also teaching them to read and interpret maps critically—a crucial life skill for the twenty-first century. Contrary to popular belief, maps are not objective depictions of an external truth but subjective representations of the world around us, shaped by a multitude of decisions on the part of the mapmaker (selecting a projection, scale, color scheme, imagery, icons, labels, and so forth). As such, maps have the power to persuade and indeed, to “lie.” And yet, maps are used every day in high stakes contexts where they are often presented as factual, objective, and complete: by news sources in communicating current events, by the state in making policy, and by the military in crafting defense strategy, to name a few examples. As such, studying maps and mapmaking provides an excellent starting point for students to explore the foundations of scientific knowledge, the scientific process, and the ways in which knowledge is always bound up in larger structures of power.