Publication details:
Title: 波斯中国风: 13世纪蒙古帝国治下的伊朗艺术 (Islamic Chinoiserie: The Art of Mongol
Iran)
Author / Translator: Yuka Kadoi (transl. Fan Wu)
Publisher: Shanghai: Zhongxi Book Company, 2025
ISBN: 9787547521755
Pages: 407 pp.

3. CFP (ONLINE SEMINAR / PUBLICATION OPPORTUNITY): Borders and Sustainability: Mapping Landscapes, Resources, and Spatial Traditions from Antiquity to the Contemporary Era — Entangled Histories Seminar Series 2026–2027

Call for Papers Entangled Histories Seminar Series 2026–2027 Theme: Borders and Sustainability: Human and Natural Resources across Time and Space

Following the success of the previous edition, the Entangled Histories Seminar Series invites abstracts for its 2026–2027 cycle.

This entire seminar series will be held fully online and will offer a publication opportunity with a leading global academic publisher for a selection of the most significant contributions.

We warmly welcome contributions centred on the History of Cartography, Historical Geography, Spatial Humanities, Philology, Material Culture, and Environmental History, adopting an interdisciplinary, diachronic perspective that spans a wide chronological trajectory from antiquity and the medieval world, through the early modern era and the milestone cartographic shifts of the 18th century, up to colonial mapping, national state-building, and contemporary digital geographies. In alignment with H-Maps’ mission, this series encourages proposals that investigate how the making, circulation, use, and preservation of maps negotiated, represented, and shaped ecological limits, resource management, and the fluid dynamics of territorial, political, and conceptual boundaries (borders).

Mapping the Limits: Cartography, Resource Management, and the Visualisation of Borders

This edition explores sustainability and borders not merely as modern environmental or political frameworks, but as historical concepts deeply intertwined with the development of cartographic literacy, imperial expansions, and indigenous spatial resistance. The series investigates these dynamics across several interconnected dimensions:

The Cartography of Frontiers, Boundaries, and Environmental Limits: The graphic and mathematical drawing of imperial, national, and internal boundaries on maps (with a strong interest in cartographic transitions and reforms before and after 1725); how the lines traced by cartographers conditioned resource exploitation, access to water basins, pastoral mobility, and the enclosure of common lands from the Mediterranean to the Americas.
Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and Indigenous Spatialities in Visual Archives: The historical study of how indigenous, vernacular, and non-Western spatial traditions—such as Mesoamerican codices, Andean khipus, or local North African oasis charts—visualised ecological micro-climates, communal resource management, and agricultural topographies; how these alternative modes of mapping survived, resisted, or were absorbed by Western geometric cartography.
Global Elemental Theory, Cosmological Mapping, and Humoral Geographies: Intellectual and visual approaches to how environmental elements (earth, water, air, fire), climate zones, and bodily humours were mapped in ancient, medieval, and early modern cartography. We welcome proposals addressing the representation of the elements in medieval mappae mundi, early modern portolan charts, and geographical treatises where the physical environment and human health were bound together through spatial icons.
Textual and Material Reuse, Palimpsests, and the Overwriting of Maps: The material and philological history of cartographic recycling, alteration, and reuse. We invite studies on the physical modification of copper printing plates, the erasure and overwriting of toponomastic layers, the translation and adaptation of ancient geographical texts (such as Ptolemaic models or Islamic maritime manuals) across linguistic frontiers, and the cartographic erasure of sacred indigenous landscapes through the systematic overwriting of colonial administrative grids.
Material Cartography, Exploitation, and the Extraction Landscape: How maps served as primary instruments for resource extraction, tracking the material history of mining (e.g., Andean silver, European coal), timber management for naval fleets, and the layout of plantation complexes; the use of cadastral mapping to enforce taxation and evaluate the carrying capacity and ecological sustainability of subjected lands.
The Epistemological Status of Marginal Cartographies and Vernacular Lore: Methodological reflections on how oral traditions, local navigational folklore, and vernacular climate knowledge left traces on formal map margins, travelogues, and geographical glossaries, serving as alternative archives of environmental shifts and community resilience against state-imposed spatial boundaries.
Socio-Environmental Shocks, Crises, and Cartographic Evidence: The role of cartography in documenting, predicting, or reacting to ecological crises, such as major desertifications, coastal erosions, river diversions, locust plagues, and famines; how shifting borders in times of resource stress were recorded by military and civil engineers.
Symbolic, Visual, and Cinematic Receptions of the Mapped Landscape: Representations of the grid, the compass rose, and the frontier in literature, iconography, and historical drama; the theatrical staging of territorial disputes; and the modern cinematic, media, or digital artistic engagement with historical maps, counter-mapping, and the visualisation of historical eco-trauma.

At the heart of the series lies the concept of borders, understood as dynamic, conflictual thresholds—whether geographic barriers, political dividers, imperial lines, or the lines drawn on parchment and paper separating the wild from the cultivated—that have historically mediated access to resources, triggered negotiation, and shaped the shared, entangled histories of global societies.

Topics of Interest

We welcome contributions from a wide range of academic disciplines, including:

History of Cartography: The making, circulation, use, and preservation of maps, globes, and charts from antiquity to the 21st century.
Philology, Textual Studies, and Toponymy: Philological analysis of maps, the translation of geographical texts, manuscript studies, and the rewriting of space through place-names.
Environmental History and Historical Geography: Spatial history of landscape transformation, water management, climate impacts, and deforestation as evidenced through cartographic sources.
Archaeology and Material Culture: Cartographic archaeology, the study of architectural reuse (spolia) as documented in early town plans, and the material culture of map-making instruments.
Folklore, Anthropology, and Indigenous Studies: Counter-mapping, vernacular geographies, oral spatial traditions, and the anthropological analysis of community-based territory demarcation.
Ancient and Medieval Spatial Studies: Classical geography, Roman land surveying (agrimensura), medieval world maps, Islamic cartography, and the visual reuse of ancient geographical paradigms.
Colonial and Imperial Studies: Vice-royalties, maritime trade networks, boundary commissions, global extraction mapping, and the cartographic rewriting of indigenous spaces.
Art History, Architecture, and Visual Culture: Map aesthetics, landscape iconography, architectural drawings, and the intersection between fine art and technical mapping.
Media Studies, Cinema, and Digital Humanities: The representation of maps and frontiers in cinema and theatre, critical GIS, digital preservation of cartographic heritage, and the media history of spatial surveillance.

Seminar Format & Schedule

Format: Online seminar via Zoom (Approx. 30-minute presentation followed by discussion). Scheduling will take international time zones into account as much as possible.
Schedule: October 2026 – Summer 2027.

Submission Guidelines & Selection Rules Proposals must be submitted in English and include the following details:

Title of the proposed paper.
Abstract (250–300 words).
Short biographical note (100–150 words).
Institutional affiliation (if any) or independent scholar status.
Contact email.
Preferred months of availability (between October 2026 and Summer 2027).

⚠️ MANDATORY ABSTRACT CRITERIA: The abstract submitted MUST clearly explain how the proposed paper intends to address and integrate the central core topics of the series: Borders (confini) and Sustainability(sostenibilità) through the lens of cartographic history, map production, circulation, or spatial analysis. Proposals that fail to explicitly address this conceptual intersection will not be considered.

⚠️ CRITICAL SUBMISSION REQUIREMENT: All submission materials (title, abstract explaining the approach to borders and sustainability, bio, affiliation, and availability) MUST be compiled and submitted into a SINGLE file(either .doc, .docx, or .pdf). Multiple attachments will not be considered.

Please submit your single-file proposal to: entangledhistories.seminars [@] outlook.com

Important Dates

Deadline for abstracts: 31 August 2026
Notification of acceptance: By 30 September 2026

Publication Opportunity A selection of the most significant contributions will be published in a special issue or in a dedicated edited volume with a major, world-leading academic publisher.

Contact Information

Organised by:

Dr Maria Pia Ester Cristaldi (Üsküdar University)
Dr Elisa Ramazzina (University of Insubria)

Under the patronage of:

The Faculty of Communication and the Master’s Programme in Media and Cultural Studies at Üsküdar University.

Contact Email

entangledhistories.seminars@outlook.com

URL

https://sites.google.com/view/entangledhistories/home

4. Cartorient,published by the Research Center on the Iranian World (CeRMI, CNRS, Paris), is pleased to share with you theAtlas of Iran in the Mid-Twentieth Century, which has recently been published online at CARTORIENT.

This cartographic study is the result of a collaboration between the Faculty of Geography of the University of Tehran and CeRMI, conducted by Bernard Hourcade, Abbas Rajaei, and Hossein Mansourian.

It constitutes the first comprehensive cartographic analysis of Iran based on data from the First national population census of Iran, conducted in 1956, at the detailed administrative scale of the 119 shahrestan(districts). The Atlas comprises 34 maps, accompanied by analytical commentaries in both French and English, depicting the social and economic characteristics of Iran during the 1930s–1950s. By providing a detailed picture of the country’s past, it offers valuable insights for a better understanding of contemporary Iran.

5. Reuters: How 5 weeks of war shattered some of Iran’s cherished monuments

6. Muslim Writing, Writing Muslimness in Europe: Transcultural Perspectives, edited by Carmen Zamorano Llena, Billy Gray, Carolina León Vegas, and Carles Magrinyà Badiella (Routledge, 2026)

https://www.routledge.com/Muslim-Writing-Writing-Muslimness-in-Europe-Transcultural-Perspectives/ZamoranoLlena-Gray-LeonVegas-MagrinyaBadiella/p/book/9781032733449

Posted in: Academic items

June 30, 2026
by Andrew Newman
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