Mapping the Early Modern World

FAIN: EH-272453-20

Newberry Library (Chicago, IL 60610-3305)
James R. Akerman (Project Director: March 2020 to present)
Lia Markey (Co Project Director: August 2020 to present)

A four-week institute for 25 higher education faculty to study early modern cartography. 

The Newberry Library requests $218,363.49 to support a Level I summer institute for higher education faculty titled “Mapping the Early Modern World.” The four-week institute will be co-organized by James Akerman, Director of the Newberry’s Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography, and Lia Markey, director of the Newberry’s Center for Renaissance Studies. The institute’s 25 participants will pursue a program of seminars and workshops, discussion, and research exploring interdisciplinary approaches to the study of maps in connection with the global intellectual, cultural, and geographical transformations of the world between 1400 and 1700. The course of reading and discussion will consider five major “theaters” in which the production, use, and interpretation of maps operated: the world, the city, the land, the sea, and the skies.