The Newberry Library’s Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography invites school teachers nationwide to apply for its 2005 NEH summer seminar, “Developing Cartographic Literacy with Historic Maps.” This 3-week seminar led by Jim Akerman (The Newberry Library) and Jerry Danzer (Emeritus, The University of Illinois at Chicago) is designed to promote an understanding of the culture and history of cartography, to develop cartographic literacy, and to encourage effective map use in the classroom. A program of seminars based on recent scholarship in the history of cartography, hands-on workshops, and guided individual research will allow teachers to explore the relevancy of geography and historic maps to their own interests and teaching needs. The seminar sessions and workshops will serve as forums for refining and applying the skills necessary to read maps as products of science, artistic creations, rhetorical tools, storytellers, and expressions of power; and as representations of worldviews and local landscapes.

Applications are encouraged from teachers of a broad range of courses and grade levels. Successful applicants will receive a stipend of $2,400 to help defray travel and housing expenses. Completed applications must be postmarked no later than Tuesday, 1 March 2005.