Cartographic Encounters: Exploring the Nature of Early Maps

This new course will take place on three consecutive Thursdays in April from 7:00-8:30 pm in the Bartels Seminar Room of the Flynt Center of Early New England Life at Historic Deerfield, Deerfield, Massachusetts. Lecture topics include:

April 11: Introduction to the History of Maps and Mapmaking

April 18: Early Maps and Visual Culture

April 25: The 18th-Century American Map Trade

Program: Antique maps provide a fascinating window on the progression of geographical knowledge, and at the same time reveal contemporary views of the world. Representing a convergence of history, geography, and art, antiquarian maps are desirable to both researchers and collectors. Mapmaking in the Western world, which can be traced back to the Classical era, is part of the history of exploration and conquest, politics, colonialism, commerce, printing, and the graphic arts. This series of classes will provide an overview of the history of mapmaking and map printing, examine maps as graphic objects that reflect political, cultural, and economic narratives, and will conclude with a discussion of the business of map-making in the Anglo-American context. Each class session will feature an illustrated lecture and access to objects from the Historic Deerfield collection.

Instructor: David Bosse, Historic Deerfield’s Librarian and Curator of Maps, has worked in the map collections of the Newberry Library (Chicago) and the Clements Library, University of Michigan. He has written numerous articles and reviews on the history of American mapmaking, is author of Civil War Newspaper Maps: A Historical Atlas (Baltimore, 1993) and a contributor to Mapping Boston (Boston, 1999). In 2007, he curated the exhibition, North by North-east: Five Centuries of New England Maps at the Flynt Center of Early New England Life.

Registration Fee:
Non-member registration: $105 per person.
Members of Historic Deerfield: $95 per person.
Special Early-bird registrations save $10 by March 14, 2013.
Pre-registration required by April 9, 2013

For information or telephone registration, please contact Julie Orvis at 413-775-7179 or
jorvis [at] historic-deerfield [dot] org

Register online, or click here for a printable program registration form.