Acknowledgments
For this project much is owed to many. In 1992 James Akerman, who was then organizing panels for the biennial meeting of the International Association for the History of Cartography, invited me to submit a proposal on cartography and cinema. His inspiration and encouragement, along with that of many historians and theorists of cartography, have helped to guide this work from that inception. Special thanks go to David Buisseret for his long-standing support, and to the scholars who organized and spoke at the Virginia Garrett Lectures in October 2000 on the theme “Cartography and Popular Culture,” notably Richard Francaviglia, Arthur and Jan Holzheimer, and Dennis Reinhardt. In that same year some of these concepts were presented in the frame of the Germaine Brée Memorial Lecture at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin–Madison through the kind invitation of Paul Boyer, Ullrich Langer, and Loretta Freiling. Also in 2000 these ideas found an extraordinarily helpful reception in the cadre of a seminar led by Marie-Claire Ropars-Wuilleumier at the École Normale Supérieure and the University of Paris–VIII; to her and her team, which included Dominique Château, Claude Mouchard, Jean-Michel Rey, and Pierre Sorlin, my gratitude is infinite. Raymond Gay-Crosier and Maureen Turim provided a lovely forum for this topic at the University of Florida, as did Peggy McCracken and George Hoffmann at the University of Michigan, where Richard Abel offered keen counsel. Scott Durham and Timothy Murray did the same during a seminar at Northwestern University.
Much of the research for this book developed through a core course taught at Harvard University, “Cinéma et civilisation française.” The students and teaching fellows who sustained my work include Nick Nesbitt, Andrea Flores, Elisabeth Hodges, Maggie Flinn, Natasha Lee, Mahalia Gayle, Alexis Sornin, and Ludovic Cortade. Among the hundreds of wondrous students I think immediately of Melissa Lee, Jenny Lefcourt, Katherine Stirling, Raja Haddad, John Hulsey, Ally Field, and Rachel Zerner. Giuliana Bruno, Bruce Jenkins, Bob Gardner, Ross McElwee, Rob Moss, and Rick Rentschler have been exceptionally supportive colleagues. Kriss Ravetto and Mario Biagioli commented on the material, as have students and tutors at the Kirkland House at Harvard University (Reid Caroline, Tim Hardt, Sharonna Pearl, Andy Rice, John Walsh). Thanks go to Deidra Perley and Steffan Pierce for their help in scanning many of the images that accompany the text.
I thank Richard Morrison and Douglas Armato of the University of Minnesota Press, who invited me to engage the project, and to the two aquiline and overgenerous readers, T. Jefferson Kline and David Rodowick, who helped to shape the material into its current form. Thanks go to Annette Michaelson for listening to matter destined for the introduction; to Daniela Boccassini and Carlo Testa, whose good words inflected chapter 3; to Bertrand Tavernier, whose observations informed research in chapter 5; to Rosemarie Scullion and Van Kelly, for reading an early version of chapter 9; to Therese Boyd, who copyedited the work so keenly that all errors are mine alone. To this project I allotted some of the time granted by a Guggenheim Award to conduct research on topography, and I am immensely grateful to this extraordinary foundation.
Revisions were being completed in August 2004 when the devastating news of the untimely death of David Woodward arrived. A selfless sponsor of the project, a model of generosity, and the first and finest historian of cartography of his time, David encouraged my writing at every stage of this book’s development. Behind his shadow stands that of Walter Conley, my father, who made my childhood an endless encounter of cinema. To Verena Conley, whose passion for the pleasures of life and film is dauntless, this book is dedicated.