Literary Geographies: Creative Mapping Assignments in a Humanities Classroom

This paper engages the concept of a literary map as a pedagogical tool that can be used productively in a literature and, more generally, a humanities classroom. A literary map taxonomy (positivist, allegorical, and analytical maps) is introduced and a specific mapping assignment sequence is featured in the context of teaching an upper-level literature course. By engaging the students in the act of mapmaking, this assignment sequence addresses students' insufficient geographical knowledge and the failure to understand the rhetorical nature of maps. By signaling points of tension between different mapping modalities, this essay makes a case for the usefulness of qualitative maps in literature pedagogy.