Monograph
Mapping Beyond Measure: Art, Cartography, and the Space of Global Modernity. University of Nebraska Press, 2019, pp. 318.
“Mapping Beyond Measure is admirable for many reasons … Ferdinand’s text is an indispensable read for scholars who work at the intersection of cultural geography, critical cartography, and the visual arts as well as historians of art and visual culture … Ferdinand convincingly demonstrates how, by studying cartographic artworks, we can glean new insights about the role of map-making in the formation of modern institutions and processes of global modernization that shaped our past and continue to inform our present and future.”
—Kristan M. Hanson, H-Maps Reviews
“Thought-provoking … Ferdinand impressively traverses a variety of interdisciplinary approaches from cartography, sociology, political and philosophical theory, as well as art analysis; one hopes he can expand this work into more publishing and even exhibitions. … Necessary reading for anyone concerned with the contemporary nexus of art and mapping.”
—Ruth Watson, Visual Studies 38.3/4
“Ferdinand’s argument that art can help reveal both the potency and the spectrality of modern cartography’s claims to knowledge, at once tearing them down whilst also relying on them, is a powerful one, which offers an original, and compelling, contribution to ongoing geographical debates around mapping.”
—Dave McLaughlin, Social and Cultural Geography 23.2
“Deep and wonderful … the author does superb work in analyzing art and cartography. … I recommend this book to a museum curator, art historian, artist, or person with a serious interest in art and/or cartography.”
—Lucia Lovison-Golob, Western Association of Map Libraries Bulletin 52.2
“Mapping Beyond Measure is a fascinating exploration into the intersection of art, cartography, and philosophy. … An important work that will support the burgeoning field of critical cartography and of map art in general.”
—Zach Thorpe, Cartographic Perspectives 105
“An innovative interpretation of contemporary artworks” and “perceptive exploration of how visual artists in our times have used the map form to relate to the world, to the globe, indeed to earth itself.”
—Sumathi Ramaswamy, author of Terrestrial Lessons: The Conquest of the World as Globe
“An important book on a theoretical level ... By looking at recent technologies as a continuation of existing ontologies, Ferdinand goes beyond the hype around digital mapping.”
—Jess Bier, author of Mapping Israel, Mapping Palestine: How Occupied Landscapes Shape Scientific Knowledge
Edited volumes
Other Globes: Past and Peripheral Imaginations of Globalization. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, pp. 318. Coedited with Irene Villaescusa-Illán and Esther Peeren.
“In an era in which it has never felt more pressing that we explore our relations with the earth, interrogate our imaginations of the globe, and parse planetary thinking, Other Globes expertly assembles a series of empirically rich and theoretically astute contributions that do just this. This is indeed a collection for our times.”
—Harriet Hawkins, author of For Creative Geographies: Geography, Visual Arts and the Making of Worlds
“Other Globes offers a compelling interdisciplinary and remarkably transnational argument for the notion that the view from nowhere is also one of many views from somewhere.”
—Benjamin Lazier, author of “Earthrise; or, The Globalization of the World Picture.”
“The essays gathered here respond varyingly but diligently to two preoccupations laid out in the volume’s introduction: identifying and mobilizing older and peripheral imaginaries of the world/globe/planet to undermine the dominant imaginary that has organized globalization. … Rescuing ‘globes’ from their recent theoretical devaluations, Ferdinand’s contribution simultaneously undertakes a critique of ‘fetishized placehood’ and shows ‘place as the scene of our homelessness’.”
—Divya Dwivedi, Arcadia 55.1
Heterotopia and Globalisation in the Twenty-First Century. Routledge, 2020, pp. 250.
Coedited with Irina Souch and Daan
Wesselman.
“Globalization has brought with it a sort of leveling or homogenizing force, but at the same time it had introduced hitherto unthinkable diversity and difference. This paradox lies at the heart of Heterotopia and Globalisation in the Twenty-First Century. The contributors examine different heterotopian spaces, but they also connect them to larger dynamics, such as tourism and migration, climate change, and digital technologies. The book will be of interest to scholars of these complex, but critical phenomena.”
—Robert T. Tally Jr., cultural geographies 28.1
“These essays reveal an interconnected world increasingly dominated by digital technologies and neoliberal capitalist market forces. Heterotopia also has the potential to illuminate the realities of a planet in the throes of mass extinctions and climate change. … This interdisciplinary work will interest academics in philosophy, the social sciences, geography, film, literary studies, and architecture. Summing Up: Recommended.”
—J.H. Rubin, CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries 58.6