Lectures

This talk will discuss the use of maps in the Jingding Era Gazetteer of Jiankang (1261-1269), a woodblock-printed book chronicling the history and geography of the temporary imperial capital of the Southern Song dynasty at present-day Nanjing. Commissioned by Ma Guangzu (n.d.), three-term prefect of the city between 1255 and 1269, early reproductions of this book offer a fair impression of the 1269 print run. To unpack the role of maps in this project, I will examine their connections to earlier maps of the city, to map-making at large in the Southern Song, and to urban reconstruction and heritage preservation at Jiankang before and under Ma Guangzu’s leadership. In so doing, I highlight how, at a time of existential crisis, ideas about psychophysiological interaction and moral agency informed the rebuilding of Green Stream as public space and a means to reorient this city in deep time. Tracing interrelations between prefect and compiler, text and image, and building and mapping in the city, I will show how the Jingding gazetteer maps aimed to recast how Jiankang’s relations to its past and future could be imagined. As part of an exploration of the mapping of time in woodblock-printed books in imperial China, I argue that, by surfacing the motive forces that continued to shape Jiankang’s natural and urban landscape, the Jingding Gazetteer maps represent a new strategy to visualize civilizational history in place.