SYMPOSIUM at Université Le Havre Normandie — 12–13 March 2027
Organisation : Comité Français de Cartographie, Université Le Havre Normandie (Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences), Identités et Cultures Research Group, Le Havre Heritage Library
In partnership with : Institut universitaire de France, Bibliothèque nationale de France, EPHE (Histara), CNRS (Laboratoire de médiévistique occidentale de Paris)
RATIONALE
This conference sets out to re-examine the place of women in the making, circulation, and reception of cartographic knowledge up to the 20th century, taking into account the various forms their participation took, the documentary biases inherent in the sources, and contemporary methodological issues. It is part of the broader field of the history of women in science and of the study of the gendered construction of knowledge.
An emerging field of research
While historiography has taken an interest in women in science since before the 1970s, and while the history of women and travel has been regularly explored, their role in cartography and their interest in maps only began to be studied around the turn of the 2000s, nearly thirty years later. This pioneering work emerged mainly in the English-speaking world (Shefrin, 1999; Hudson, Ritzlin, 2000; Dando, 2018, 2024; Tyner, 1997; 1999; 2001) and in Italy (Rossi, 2005). Christine Petto’s survey article “Women and Cartography” (2020) opened up more avenues than it closed.
This historiographical lag is even more pronounced in French scholarship. While French research has taken an interest in women cartographers of the 20th century (Robic, 1997, 2009), as well as in the important role they played in research institutions and libraries (Ginsburger, 2015; Ginsburger, Robic, 2017; Antonutti, 2020), studies of their place in the construction of cartographic knowledge before the 20th century remain too rare.
A systemic invisibilisation
As in other scientific fields, several factors combine to render women’s involvement in geography and cartography invisible. Women are difficult to trace in the archives because of their limited legal existence. Conventions of the time denied their competence or consigned them to anonymity out of modesty. Their identity dissolves into initials in place of a full name, or into the designation “widow,” which presents them as mere continuators of their husband’s work.
Women are also excluded from the historiography of authorial recognition in cartography because of a paradoxical requirement: complete mastery of the full range of skills involved in cartographic production (intellectual design, drawing, engraving). Yet almost no geographer possesses such total mastery, since cartographic production is, by its very nature, collaborative work. Thus, when a woman conceives a map intellectually without engraving it herself (the Carte de Tendre by Madeleine de Scudéry), present-day critics attribute authorship to the male engraver (François Chauveau). Conversely, women engravers are confined to the status of mere executants.
RESEARCH THEMES
Theme 1 – Trajectories and output of women cartographers
The conference will focus on women cartographers by:
- Tracing individual trajectories, without setting aside the role of widows in the continuity of family workshops, which deserves particular attention. While widows generally ran their late husband’s workshop for only a limited period (Barker, 1997, pp. 90–92), there are several notable exceptions, such as Mary Senex, who ran the workshop for fifteen years after her husband’s death, as did Marie Desmaretz, widow of Duval, Geneviève Hourlier, widow of Antoine de Fer, and Marie Darbisse, widow of Guillaume Delisle, to name just a few examples.
- Establishing the conditions of access to cartographic practice and the professional and family networks drawn upon.
- Examining the possible specificities of their output: a preference for certain cartographic forms such as allegorical or thematic maps (Carte de Tendre, the map by Marie Le Masson Le Golft, the work of the astronomer Nicole-Reine Lepaute), or “informal” maps produced in a playful or educational context.
Theme 2 – The “little hands” of cartography
Following the recent work of Françoise Waquet (2015, 2022) on the “little hands” of science, and of Delphine Gardey on women’s clerical work (2001), this conference could be an occasion to bring to light the largely unexplored, invisible work of women: informants, copyists, draughtswomen, engravers, illuminators, secretaries, and workshop hands. This effort has already been made for the first half of the 20th century (Swab, 2025), but it could equally be pursued for earlier periods, since women can sometimes be identified in depictions of workshops.
Theme 3 – Women readers and the reception of maps
The question of women as readers of maps — whether elite women, schoolmistresses, booksellers, schoolgirls, or students — opens up a particularly fertile field of investigation. On what occasions did these women encounter maps? On what media? And through what modes of reading?
This question also raises the issue of education, since reading a map presupposes prior training, and thus invites attention to the full range of women’s educational practices connected with maps.
Finally, Christine Petto also points to periodicals and advertising aimed at women, as well as playful uses of maps: games, novels, embroidered maps, among other forms of appropriation. As an example, the map of Île de France (present-day Mauritius) included in the novel Paul et Virginie by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, a major publishing success of the late 18th century with a largely female readership, illustrates this still under-explored dimension of the reception of maps.
By adopting a broad chronological framework, from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, the conference is open to all geographical areas. It is aimed at researchers in history, history of science, art history, literature, geography, and related disciplines.
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
Abstracts of c. 300 words, together with a short biographical note, should be submitted by 30 September 2026 to the following address: lucile.haguet@lehavre.fr
The selection committee will meet in early October and will announce the results of the call for papers no later than the second half of October.
The conference will take place on 12–13 March 2027 at Université Le Havre Normandie. A presentation of the heritage collections of the Le Havre municipal library is also planned.
Selected papers will be considered for publication in an issue of the journal of the Comité français de cartographie, Cartes & Géomatique, during 2028.
WORKS CITED AND SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Antonutti, Isabelle (ed.). 2020. Figures de bibliothécaires. Villeurbanne: Presses de l’Enssib, series “Papiers.” (see entry for Myriam Foncin)
Baigent, Elizabeth. 2025. “‘Octavia Always Enjoyed a Map’: Octavia Hill, Maps, and Victorian Women Reformers.” The Cartographic Journal 62 (3–4): 190–204. https://doi.org/10.1080/00087041.2025.2627791
Barker, Hannah. 1997. “Women, Work and the Industrial Revolution: Female Involvement in the English Printing Trades, c. 1700–1840.” In Gender in Eighteenth-Century England: Roles, Representations and Responsibilities, ed. Hannah Barker and Elaine Chalus, 81–100. London: Longman.
Costa, Shelley. 2002. “The Ladies’ Diary: Gender, Mathematics, and Civil Society in Early-Eighteenth-Century England.” Osiris, 2nd series, 17: 49–73.
Dando, Christine E. 2018. Women and Cartography in the Progressive Era. London/New York: Routledge, series “Studies in Historical Geography.” New edition in 2024.
Findlen, Paula. 1995. “Translating the New Science: Women and the Circulation of Knowledge in Enlightenment Italy.” Configurations 3: 167–206.
Gardey, Delphine. 2001. La Dactylographe et l’expéditionnaire. Histoire des employés de bureau, 1890–1930. Paris: Belin, series “Modernités.”
Ginsburger, Nicolas. 2015. “Les premières géographes universitaires en France: enquête sur les débuts d’une féminisation disciplinaire (1913–1928).” Cybergeo: European Journal of Geography.
Ginsburger, Nicolas, and Marie-Claire Robic. 2017. “Portrait en groupe de femmes-géographes. La féminisation du champ disciplinaire au milieu du XXe siècle, entre effets de contexte et de structure (1938–1960).” Annales de géographie, 2017/1.
Hudson, Alice C., and Mary McMichael Ritzlin. 2000. “Preliminary Checklist of Pre-Twentieth-Century Women in Cartography.” Cartographica 37 (3): 3–24.
Longchamps, Denis. 2014. “Political Tourism: Elizabeth Simcoe’s Maps and Views of Canada (1791–1796).” Imago Mundi 66: 213–223.
Pastoureau, Mireille. 1984. Les atlas français, XVIe–XVIIe siècles: répertoire bibliographique et étude. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, Département des cartes et plans.
Pedley, Mary Sponberg. 1979. “The Subscription List of the 1757 Atlas Universel: A Study in Cartographic Dissemination.” Imago Mundi 31: 66–77.
Petto, Christine M. 2009. “Playing the Feminine Card: Women of the Early Modern Map Trade.” Cartographica 44 (2): 67–81.
Petto, Christine M. 2020. Women and Enlightenment: Women as Producers and Consumers of Maps, 1650–1800. History of Cartography, vol. 4. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Robic, Marie-Claire. 1997. “Exclusion, régression… Du ‘Ladies’ Program’ au ‘sans femme’?” Strates: Matériaux pour la recherche en sciences sociales, n° 9.
Robic, Marie-Claire. 2009. “Beaujeu-Garnier, J.” In International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, ed. Rob Kitchin and Nigel Thrift, 275–276. Elsevier.
Rossi, Luisa. 2005. L’altra mappa. Esploratrici, viaggiatrici, geografe. Reggio Emilia: Diabasis, 351 p.
Shefrin, Jill. 1999. “‘Make it a Pleasure and Not a Task’: Educational Games for Children in Georgian England.” Princeton University Library Chronicle 60: 251–275.
Shevelow, Kathryn. 1989. Women and Print Culture: The Construction of Femininity in the Early Periodical. London: Routledge.
Skedd, Susan. 1997. “Women Teachers and the Expansion of Girls’ Schooling in England, c. 1760–1820.” In Gender in Eighteenth-Century England: Roles, Representations and Responsibilities, ed. Hannah Barker and Elaine Chalus, 101–125. London: Longman.
Swab, Jack. 2025. “Beyond ‘Clerical Cartography’: Gender and the (Re)Production of Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps.” The Cartographic Journal 62 (3–4): 177–189. https://doi.org/10.1080/00087041.2025.2627789
Tyacke, Sarah. 1978. London Map-Sellers, 1660–1720: A Collection of Advertisements for Maps Placed in the London Gazette, 1668–1719, with Biographical Notes on the Map-Sellers. Tring: Map Collector Publications.
Tyner, Judith A. 1997. “The Hidden Cartographers: Women in Mapmaking.” Mercator’s World 2 (6): 46–51.
Tyner, Judith A. 1999. “Millie the Mapper and Beyond: The Role of Women in Cartography since World War II.” Meridian 15: 23–28.
Tyner, Judith A. 2001. “Following the Thread: The Origins and Diffusion of Embroidered Maps.” Mercator’s World 6 (2): 36–41.
Waquet, Françoise. 2015. L’Ordre matériel du savoir. Comment les savants travaillent, XVIe-XXIe siècle. Paris: CNRS Éditions (repr. series “Biblis,” 2022).
Waquet, Françoise. 2022. Dans les coulisses de la science. Techniciens, petites mains et autres travailleurs invisibles. Paris: CNRS Éditions, series “Histoire,” 347 p.
White, Cynthia L. 1970. Women’s Magazines, 1693–1968. London: Michael Joseph.
Contact Information
Lucile Haguet, librarian at the Bibliothèque municipale du Havre, lucile.haguet@lehavre.fr
Catherine Hofmann, map curator at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, catherine.hofmann@bnf.fr
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