ABSTRACT
This chapter traces several approaches for utilizing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to enhance the teaching of a multiethnic literary text at multiple levels in the college curriculum. The first approach focuses on the outcomes of a directed undergraduate research project centered on literary cartography, where collaboration with a student researcher with extensive GIS skills led to the creation of layered maps that each offered new ways of understanding and analyzing Karen Tei Yamashita's text Tropic of Orange. The created maps were then used to subsequently teach the same text in a sophomore literary survey, where they allowed students to unearth new ways of analyzing the novel by focusing on the constructed nature of space. The chapter presents an overview of a "virtual learning community" that engaged two separate classes – one of English majors and one of GIS majors – in a hands-on collaborative literary cartography project.
