Saying hello (imported from class discussion board)

 Hi again, all. Mark Canavera, returning to South Carolina by way of: New York City (I lived in Harlem from 2011 until last week); Cotonou, Benin (2011); Niamey, Niger (2010); Abidjan and Man, Cote d'Ivoire (2007 - 2010); Kitgum, Uganda (2004-2005); and Ouagadougou and Piela, Burkina Faso (1999-2002). The temporal gaps in my list of places lived are when I completed earlier graduate studies: a Master of Public Policy degree from Harvard, which was a wonderful learning experience despite my initial reservations about Ivy League snobbery, and an MA in Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, which ironically prepared me primarily to work in zones of active conflict. I am returning to graduate school now for what I hope will be a fairly consequential career pivot: I have always been passionate about civil rights and know that the United States, and especially white Americans, need to understand how racial oppression has been fundamental to our nation's founding and its evolution. A Southerner myself, I also know that the need for this learning is not unique to the South; today, for example, New York has the most segregated school system in the nation. What gives?!? Before joining the PhD program in history, meeting Wright was fortuitous and consequential as I saw how he was combining history, public health, and GIS to tell important stories about how we got to now, and I'm thrilled to be in this class and learning alongside so many affiliates of SCIAA, even if I just learned about SCIAA today!

One question today's class left me with was this: what are the tenets of Eastern cartographic traditions? Does China, with its continuous 4,000-year-long culture, have a totally different approach to mapmaking than Western civilization?

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