Keynote Lecture by Sarah Elwood (University of Washington, Seattle)

Abstract:

I begin from the premise that ‘critical’ cartographies have always been an intersectional feminist project, thinking and doing cartography at the crossroads of feminist, postcolonial and Marxist critiques of science, vision, and representation; the structural and ideological relations
between technology, media, and political economy; and the entanglements of Western cartography in projects of extraction, dispossession and genocide. Feminist cartographies’ creative innovation and insurgent politics have dramatically transformed the possibilities of cartographic praxis in academic and activist worlds - yet as I will argue here, more is possible, necessary and already underway! This paper traces framings of cartography that originate in Black, Indigenous and decolonial feminist thought, teasing out how these framings center epistemological-political relations that overspill the limits of much antecedent critical cartography, and give rise to profoundly different forms of critique, creativity and
ethical relations in cartographic praxis. We can continue building a capacious and powerfully transformative feminist cartography by leaning into the
epistemological-political frameworks on which these traditions are founded, and learning from a radical repertoire of counter-atlas projects, emplaced installation and performance mappings, and digital-embodied cartographies. I argue these feminist cartographies and their attendant data, visual, archival and inscription practices are a vital practice of feminist futuring: They cultivate life-affirming sociospatial relations for structurally oppressed groups for whom the future has never been assured.

Date: Wednesday, 26 August 2026, 6:15–7:45 pm
Location: Lecture Hall ESA Ost 221, Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, 2nd floor
It will also be broadcast online via lecture-to-go. Further information can be found one week before the event on the following website: https://humangeographische-sommerschulen.de/

This event is part of the HISS Summer School "Redrawing Space/s" (25–29 August 2026). and open for public The lecture will be held in English.