Lectures of Opportunity: "Don’t Believe Me On This: Engaging with Truth and Skepticism In Maps and Data"

Don’t Believe Me On This: Engaging with Truth and Skepticism In Maps and Data

How do maps and cartographic visualizations shape our understanding of what is “really” real in the world? Because all forms of representation rely on omission, simplification, symbolization, and aggregation in order to make complex real-world phenomena presentable and knowable, bias and distortion are inherent in maps, and no map can ever be “perfectly” accurate. Instead, truth and trust are more appropriately understood as issues which are depending on the social, political, and rhetorical context within which a representation is situated. In this lecture, Garrett Dash Nelson will discuss the Leventhal Map & Education Center’s 2020–2022 exhibition Bending Lines as an entry point into interrogating how maps mediate our collective understanding of what is true about the geography of the world.

About this Lecture

Lectures of Opportunity offers U.S. Naval War College (NWC) students, faculty, and staff an opportunity to learn more about national and international socio-political subjects that may be of relevance to the NWC community.