Sitting down to write my first newsletter, I'm already realizing how much of a challenge it is to pack everything the Leventhal Map & Education Center does into a single message. In just the past few weeks, we've completed the first-ever Maptivist elective course for high school students, contributed to an important public discussion about the geography of sea level rise in Boston, and won an award for our Bending Lines exhibition. We're developing creative new digital methods, reigniting our American Revolution collections, and confronting challenging issues like how GIS technology can be used to worsen racial divides.

Geography is a big topic, and we have big plans to keep growing, experimenting, teaching, and learning. I can't wait to tell you more about what we're up to. And, as always, if you have an idea for us, please get in touch.

Last week, WBUR featured a thought-provoking series about Boston’s shoreline and the challenges that lie ahead as sea levels rise. The series included an article from the Leventhal Center exploring Boston’s changing shoreline using eight maps from our collections. As we write in the article, you can't hope to plan for the future without understanding just how dramatically Boston's relationship to the ocean has changed in the past.

Do you know where the tombolo is on the outline of eighteenth century Boston? Read the article for the answer—and to discover how Boston’s shoreline has been constantly redrawn for hundreds of years.

Two new features highlight the Center's groundbreaking work with K-12 students. Our Education Manager Lynn Brown writes about the projects created in the Maptivist elective, with students investigating the question of how racial ideas become spatial practice in Boston. Read more and learn about how one student began looking at Afro-Latinx identity on maps of Boston.

Next year, we'll be deepening our collaboration with the Data + Feminism Lab at MIT through a grant led by Eric Huntley designed to build interactive web tools for teaching critical data studies at the pK-12 level. Learn more about this project, supported by the Abdul Lateef Jameel World Education Lab.

When Professor Amy Finstein brought her College of the Holy Cross undergraduate students in the "Making the Modern City" course to the Map Center for a virtual visit this winter, the wealth of materials suggested the possibility of an interactive class project. Working with our Atlascope tool, Finstein's students developed a digital humanities site that explores the buildings and communities that were displaced by the construction of the Central Artery through the heart of Boston in the 1950s.

If you're strolling in the Rose Kennedy Greenway, above the buried Central Artery, where might you have found fish oil being processed in 1882? Read about how Professor Finstein and her students built the site and explore more of this paved-over history.

Two staff vacancies open now 

Our staff is growing. Maybe you or someone you know would like to grow along with us? Apply by June 28 for full consideration.

This spring, we began formalizing a partnership with the Washington Library at Mount Vernon to reimagine our Revolutionary War era collections in a new portal called American Revolutionary Geographies Online, or ARGO. In June, we hired a new postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Alexandra Montgomery, to help us facilitate our first steps on this exciting new project. Learn more about Dr. Montgomery, her research, and our plans for the ARGO portal in this interview.

Do you know why she finds the red line on this map so intriguing? Read the interview to find out.

We're also excited to announce the first Richard H. Brown Seminar on the Historical Geography of the American Revolutionary Era with a free virtual talk by Prof. Michele Navakas on August 4, 2021. Navakas explores the “liquid landscapes” of places like Florida in the eighteenth century, helping us reframe our understanding of the American Revolutionary period through cartography and landscape history. She examines a rich archive of historical documents that show how diverse groups of people met, struggled, and mixed in regions where boundaries themselves were hard to define.

The Osher Map Library at the University of Southern Maine is hosting an exhibition about travel in the age of Covid-19 at their gallery in Portland. It runs May 13 to October 15.

Register to visit.

On Wednesday, June 23 at 6pm, join Christina Viviana Groeger for a virtual event at the Boston Public Library discussing her new book The Education Trap.

Register for the online talk.

Writing for Places Journal, Hillary Mushkin examines a map of the Rio Grande that appears in our Bending Lines exhibition and considers the relationship between mapping and surveillance.

Read the article.

All of our recent past programs have been recorded and are available online. For instance, did you know ...

Our newsletter contains more than just maps—it's a great roundup on geography, urbanism, environment, visual culture, design, and so many more topics. You can forward this email on to your friends, and encourage them to sign up to get it in their own mailboxes.

Don Bloodgood, Ask Shell! (Shell Touring Service, ca. 1948–1955).

Banner image: Charles C. Perkins, Boston for 100 years (1895)