A vision for the future.

     So, the time has come, or so the walrus said, and it being that time, it is necessary to delineate a project plan. Initial research has been quite hectic and unorganized - where we're going to fit in the class documentary is only going to be decided this week... which means there has been very little to go on in terms of research. It's sort of the, "hey do some general research and when you've read 10 books on various different subjects, you'll learn what you really need to research" making much of that book reading a bit of a time waster. No, that's not fair, reading is never a time waster... perhaps it would be more fair to say that that time could have been spent in reading and researching more relevant and narrow sources, but I digress...

     My plan for the final project? Well, given that my group is all entangled in maps, those maps being able to fit into just about any niche this class project could take, is very flexible. From what I've gleaned from small class discussions on the subject, however, lends me to think that this final project will deal very heavily with unrest and culture among European influenced societies that are culturally very different. This being the case, I figure that we would best fit in by discussing European imperialism and how it was influenced by maps. This is still a fairly large topic and may take some whittling down, but for the time being, it's what I'm going to roll with.

     As for sources, I'll definitely be using The Power of Projections by Klinghoffer. It gives a good overview of the changes in projections over time and also goes into detail about the subtleties of maps and how they mediate us - though this is never stated directly. As I've been thinking about this projects direction, I figured I'd better read up a bit on imperialism. As a result, I found The Imperial Map: Cartography and the Mastery of Empire by Akerman. As one would expect, this book takes a bit more detailed look at map making during the age of Imperialism - with the interesting note of how helpful and necessary it was.  All of this preparation may, however, be in vain as I may have interpreted the situation entirely incorrectly. Time will tell. Until next time then...