Map Drawing, Graphic Literacy, and Pedagogy in the Early Republic

Abstract

Students in the early republic commonly stitched, drew, and painted maps of their states, nation, and world as part of their educations. Map drawing and geography were regarded as particularly appropriate subjects for girls, both as a pathway to literacy and as a means of demonstrating accomplishment. Many young girls exposed to map work in their own educations went on to become teachers themselves and carried these practices with them into an ever-growing national network of female academies and seminaries. These school maps and related penmanship journals also reveal a network and set of teaching practices around graphic literacy that has drawn little attention from historians. By drawing their country, students were making the nation manifest, inscribing its abstract boundaries and administrative units, and visualizing territory that most would never see firsthand. Map drawing was part of an intensely graphic education that significantly influenced reformers such as Emma Willard, though it also drew criticism from subsequent educators.