8. Liquid worlds: historical geographies and cartographies of the sea

Chairs: Federico Ferretti (University of Bologna, Italy) and Marcella Schmidt di Friedberg (University of Milan-Bicocca, Italy)

Type: in person

Seas, oceans and liquid spaces have always constituted a challenge to geographical representations of the world that were based on terrestrial models and on the principles that we know today as `cartographic reason’, based on linear scales, geometric projections and allegedly objective mapping. Yet, seas and oceans have also been a vehicle for what has been called modernity, world system an later globalization. This session aims at addressing critical historical geographies of seas, oceans and liquid spaces as well as histories of geography and cartography related to these geographical objects, understood both as metaphors and as material places. We especially value critical contributions that question traditional and colonial understandings of the sea as a vehicle for colonization and `civilization’. Likewise, we appreciate critical views on the sea understood as a frontier, which can seek dialogues with current scholarship on critical geopolitics, internationalism, anti-racism and decoloniality. We especially seek contributions on, but not limited to:
• Theoretical definitions of Mediterraneans and other kinds of relationality between land and sea
• The metaphors of water and liquid worlds.
• Liquid spaces and geographical thought.
• Seas, waters and oceans in the history of geography.
• Seas, waters and oceans in the history of cartography.
• Geopolitics of the sea, past and present.
• Black Atlantic, Black Pacific and seas as insurgent places.
• Geo-historical and geo-philosophical definitions of liquid spaces.
• Seas and oceans in critical thought.
• Maritime geopoetics and geo-narratives.

Keywords: history of ocean and seas, ocean and seas: spaces of inclusion and exclusion, the ocean and diversity


Parallel sessions

7th June, Martini Hall, U6 Building
S8-1 11:00-12:30 (in person)
Plural geo-histories of maritime spaces (Chair: Federico Ferretti, University of Bologna)

Yannan Ding, Reporting from the Seven Seas: The Naval Chronicle (1799-1818) and Periodical Geography at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century
Christian and Jayne Rogerson, Neglected historical geographies of coastal tourism: Mossel Bay, South Africa c1850-1991
Hannah Campbell, Bermuda: a forgotten representation of Atlantic Ocean Space
Arturo Gallia and Mirko Castaldi, From Geography to Cartography: oceans, seas and “Open Mediterraneans” into the dialogue between Adriano Balbi and Evangelista Azzi
Effie Dorovitsa, From foreign patronage to reclaiming maternal influence on the Mediterranean Sea: Greek hydrography in transit, 1900-1940


7th June, Martini Hall, U6 Building
S8-2 14:00-15:30 (hybrid)
French-speaking perspectives on the history of sea geographies (Chair: André Reyes Novaes, Rio de Janeiro State University)

Akio Onjo, On the ideas of ocean and land in the works of Paul Vidal de la Blache
Marie-Vic Ozouf-Marignier, Relations between geography and oceanography in France (1891-1911)
Antonio Ferraz de Oliveira, ‘La lutte des eaux’: Camille Vallaux’s geopolitics, oceanography and climate futures
Federico Ferretti, Challenging dualisms and cartographic reason: Eric Dardel’s geographies of liquid spaces


7th June, Martini Hall, U6 Building
S8-3 15:45-17:15 (in person)
Histories of sea cartographies (Chair: Marie-Vic Ozouf-Marignier, EHESS-Paris)

Josefina Gomez Mendoza, Connaissances et cartographies des océans à l’époque des grandes découverte d’après Humboldt dans son Examen Critique de l’Histoire de la Géographie du Nouveau Monde
Julijan Sutlović, The evolution of signs related to the safety of navigation on early modern nautical charts of the Adriatic sea
Toshiyuki Shimazu, Representing a maritime empire: allegorical artworks at the East India House in London, 1729-1799
André Reyes Novaes and  Mariana Araújo Lamego, Bordering Antarctica: Therezinha de Castro and the use of cartography in the geopolitics of the sea
Gilles Palsky, The ocean surface, a laboratory for the language of thematic cartography