Expanding the Genre of Maps with theCreation of Cultural Maps

Using previous research on genre, visual rhetoric, and mapping as visual representations of cultural conventions, this study will describe how new movements in cultural mapping have expanded the genre of mapping. Previously, maps have been used for practical applications like denoting landscape and cultural or commercial sites of interest. New, cultural maps have confronted this genre by exploring the absence of what is not typically mapped. Such maps may include subjects that may provoke the viewer to react and interact with the map. For this study, I will be analyzing cultural maps such as Rebecca Solnit's Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas and the in-progress atlas of Laramie, Wyoming that I am contributing to. I argue that the expansion of the map genre with cultural maps affects the function of maps, people's perception of their environment, and people's ideologies.