Mapping and Art in the Americas: An NEH Summer Institute for College Faculty

FAIN: EH-50200-09

Newberry Library (Chicago, IL 60610-3305)
James R. Akerman (Project Director: March 2009 to June 2011)

A five-week college and university teacher institute for twenty-five participants to explore the relationship between art and mapping in the Americas.

The Newberry Library's Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography seeks NEH support for a 5-week summer institute for college faculty that will scrutinize the interplay between American art and mapping from the Transatlantic Encounter into the 21st century. The institute, led by James Akerman (Dir. of Smith Center) and Diane Dillon (Asst. Dir. of Research & Education) will feature a guest faculty of 14 specialists in art, cartography, geography, philosophy, American history, map librarianship, and literary studies. The institute's program of lectures, seminars, workshops, and research will encourage 25 participants to cross disciplinary boundaries and move beyond regional and chronological specialties to address the complex history of the relationship between art and mapping in and of the Americas. Participants will also pursue their own projects and explore unfamiliar primary materials, including the Newberry's rich holdings in the humanities.