CFP for Special Issue in IMAGO MUNDI: The International Journal for the History of Cartography

“Maps and the Imagination”

In light of the ongoing “cartographic turn” in literary studies and recent critical attempts to

“remap” the field of cartographic history, we are seeking contributions for a special issue that

examines the relationship between maps (from historical prints to digital creations) and the

imagination (from the impact of maps on literary and visual arts to earthworks and new media).

Following the growing interest in cartographic imaginaries, documented, for example, in studies

like The Map as Art (2010), The Writer’s Map: An Atlas of Imaginary Lands (2018), or Fantasy

Mapping: Drawing Worlds (2020), not to mention handbooks like Literature and Cartography:

Theories, Histories, Genres (2017), we seek to deepen our understanding of how maps shaped

creative practices and products of the imagination broadly defined.

By foregrounding the map-imagination nexus, this issue engages questions ranging from the

philosophical to the practical. For example, proposals might consider: What do maps do for acts

of creativity, and conversely, what does the imagination want from maps? How do maps help

making and knowing imagined selves and communities? How does the image, rhetoric, and

materiality of maps influence creative practices, be it for imagining social and political contexts,

or for texts creating compelling stories ranging from classic epics and romance fiction to fantasy

novels and climate fiction? How do methods and theories of historical cartography and forms of

imagined thinking complement each other? How have the materiality and technology of

mapmaking informed imagined subjects and subjectivities, and conversely how do expressions

of the imagination allow us to rethink the nature of maps?

Given the widespread use, even inevitability, of the map-imagination nexus, it is timely to

reconsider the history of mapping in relation to the production and consumption of fantasy and

fancy, fiction and other imagined forms as it was and is practiced in global and multi-disciplinary

contexts. The Special Issue invites proposals that consider the relationship between maps and the

imagination that address:

• Substance and Materiality: paper, (movie) screens, and other media used for creative mapping

• Transfer and Dissemination: places, spaces, boundaries, communities

• Invention and Narration: world-making, histories, dreams, knowledge

• Agency and Performance: bodies, movement, animation, theater, play, gaming

Please send a brief CV (two pages max) and a 500-word proposal (list of maps encouraged) to

Martin Brückner (mcb@udel.edu) by March 15, 2026. Accepted papers of 6,000-8,000 words

will be due by February 1, 2027.