Monday, September 17, 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
Speaker: Harm J. de Blij, Michigan State University
The Geographic Society of Chicago, in collaboration with the Newberry Library and the DePaul Geographical Society, is delighted to present Professor de Blij. He will discuss this timely and critical topic, which forms the basis of his latest book of the same title.
Admission is free. No reservation is required.
Chart an extraordinary journey through culture and technology. Explore the world of maps in this six-part lecture series presented by The Field Museum and the Newberry Library. Speakers include an artist, a literary scholar, historians, cartographers and an anthropologist.
Lectures at The Field Museum on Saturdays, November 3, 10, and 17, 2007 at 2:00 pm are free with basic admission to the Museum.
Lectures at the Newberry Library on Saturdays, January 12, 19, and 26, 2008 at 11:00 am are free.
Saturday, November 3, 2:00 pm
Speaker: Ryan Williams, Curator of Archaeological Science, The Field Museum
Learn how Global Positioning Systems are used for more than just directions. Hear how Field Museum scientists use GPS technology to see how ancient peoples interacted with their environment and find out if being "ecofriendly" really is a new trend.
Free with Field Museum admission. No reservation is required.
Saturday, November 10, 2:00 pm at The Field Museum
Speaker: Doug Kolom, Product Marketing Manager, NAVTEQ
Get the inside scoop on how NAVTEQ creates their mapping tools and be one of the first to learn about new technologies on the horizon.
Free with Field Museum admission. No reservation is required.
|
|
Saturday, November 17, 2:00 pm
Speakers: Robert Karrow, Curator of Special Collections, and James Akerman, Director of the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography, The Newberry Library
Maps: Finding Our Place in the World features more than one hundred of the world's greatest maps, many of which have never been seen in Chicago. Join Maps co-curators Karrow (left) and Akerman (right) for a behind-the-scenes look at how a diverse team of anthropologists, cartographers and exhibition specialists charted a course to bring these magnificent maps to The Field Museum.
Free with Field Museum admission. No reservation is required.
The following lectures are supported in part by the Geographic Society of Chicago.
 |
|
Saturday, January 12, 11:00 am
Speaker: Ricardo Padrón, University of Virginia
Cartography, the science of making accurate maps, was still in its infancy during the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries. This meant that one of the great historical endeavors of that period - the discovery and conquest of the Americas by Spain - was carried out using "maps" that were more often verbal than pictorial. Padrón identif ies cartographic sensibilities within sixteenth-century epic poems, explorers' travel accounts, and other literary texts and demonstrates how these verbal maps are better understood as extensions of medieval than as modern ways of conceptualizing and representing space.
Admission is free. No reservation is required.
 |
|
Saturday, January 19, 11:00 am
Speaker: Alessandro Scafi, The Warburg Institute, University of London
When early Christians adopted the Hebrew Bible with its story of Genesis, the Garden of Eden became for them a paradise on earth, situated in real geography and indicated on maps. In Mapping Paradise, Alessandro Scafi explores medieval intellectual conditions that made mapping paradise possible. He also accounts for the transformations in theological doctrine and cartographic practice that eroded belief in a terrestrial paradise and led to historical and regional mapping of the Garden of Eden, beginning in the Reformation and continuing today.
Admission is free. No reservation is required.
 |
|
Saturday, January 26, 11:00 am
Speaker: Ruth Watson, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Ruth Watson is a New Zealand/Australian artist and a prizewinning scholar in historical geography. For more than fifteen years, her art has focused on how maps construct our ideas of the globe. In an illustrated talk, she will discuss how she has used salt, images of her tongue, and other unconventional media to create works of art based on the cordiform, a heart-shaped projection of the globe developed in the sixteenth century.
Admission is free. No reservation is required.
Saturday, November 3, 10:00 am
Speaker: Michael Conzen, The University of Chicago
How does a scholar go about choosing fewer than 60 maps to communicate his knowledge of a vast topic to a public audience? This was the challenge geographer Michael Conzen faced in curating an exhibit on the crucial role that maps played in extending the American nation to the Pacific Ocean. Maps paved the way for empire, for state-building, for economic exploitation, and for social advancement. How did he find a theme to follow within the confines of an exhibition? How are maps chosen for display and interpretation, and how do we "read" them with an understanding eye?
Immediately following the lecture, Michael Conzen will be available in the exhibition galleries to answer questions about Mapping Manifest Destiny. Admission is free. No reservation is required.
Saturday, November 3, 1:30 pm
Panel: Seymour Schwartz, Rochester, New York; James Akerman, Robert Karrow, and Diane Dillon, The Newberry Library
How do mapmakers and map users negotiate frontiers? From the emergence of the Waldseemüller map in 1507, to early modern and modern maps interested in Native Americans, to creation of the modern grid, to railroad maps for migrants and tourists, a map collector, geographer, map curator, and art historian discuss how maps have defined and re-defined America.
Admission is free. No reservation is required.
Organized by Richard Talbert, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for the Newberry Library's Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography
In this year's series, seven papers examine topics ranging from urban to cosmological mapping and recent trends in the study of the mapmaking by the ancient cultures ringing the Mediterranean Sea. In honor of the occasion the Newberry Library is mounting an exhibition titled Ptolemy's Geography and Renaissance Mapmakers, featuring the Newberry's stellar collection of early printed editions of the great second-century geographical manual by Claudius Ptolemy.
For forty-one years the Nebenzahl Lectures series has been dedicated to its mission to present current scholarship in the history of cartography to general audiences thanks to the ongoing support of Kenneth and Jocelyn Nebenzahl.
The Nebenzahl Lectures are free and open to the public; however, registration is required. To register visit www.newberry.org/smith/nebenzahl/neb16.html.
Thursday, November 8, 7:45 pm; Reception follows
Speaker: Alexander Jones, University of Toronto
Friday, November 9, 9:30 am
Speaker: Francesca Rochberg, University of California, Riverside
Friday, November 9, 11:00 am
Speaker: David O'Connor, New York University
Friday, November 9, 2:00 pm
Speaker: Georgia Irby-Massie, College of William and Mary
Friday, November 9, 3:30 pm
Speaker: Michael Lewis, University of Hull, U.K.
Reception Follows
Saturday, November 10, 9:00 am
Speaker: Richard Talbert, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Saturday, November 10, 10:30 am
Speaker: Benet Salway, University College London, U.K.
Founded in 1976, the Chicago Map Society is the oldest map society in North America, with a varied membership of collectors, librarians, dealers, and others interested in maps. As part of the citywide Festival of Maps, the Society will present three public lectures.
Admission to Chicago Map Society programs is free. A $5 donation is requested from non-members of the CMS. Reservations are strongly recommended. For reservations, call (312) 255-3689.
Thursday, November 15
Reception, 5:30 pm; Program, 6:00 pm
Speaker: Peter Barber, The British Library
Educated sixteenth-century Englishmen regarded maps with much the same wonder and enthusiasm that their twentieth-century counterparts did computers. They ensured that the maps that they commissioned, or even produced themselves, gave information about a wide variety of topics, far beyond the purely geographical. The maps helped them to understand their environment - and help us, today, to understand them, their problems, and their priorities.
Thursday, November 29
Reception, 5:30 pm; Program, 6:00 pm
Speaker: Susan Schulten, University of Denver
Statistical cartography came relatively late to the United States. One of the first American examples of this genre is a map of slavery published in 1861 that was of special interest to Lincoln during the war. What does this map tell us about the secession crisis, contemporary understandings of the war, and the organization of information? The slavery map is both a product of change - in terms of cartographic techniques, the development of the census, and the secession crisis - but also an example of the power maps have to shape decision-making and our understanding of reality.
Wednesday, December 12
Reception, 5:30 pm; Program, 6:00 pm
Speaker: Michael Friendly, York University, Toronto, Canada
Statistical graphics and data visualization have long histories, but their modern forms began only in the early 1800s. Between 1840 and 1910, there occurred an explosive growth in both the general use of graphic methods and the range of topics to which they were applied. Innovations were prodigious and some of the most exquisite graphics ever produced appeared, resulting in what Professor Friendly calls "The Golden Age of Statistical Graphics.''
The Newberry Library
Center for Public Programs
60 West Walton Street
Chicago, IL 60610-7324
telephone: (312) 255-3700
fax: (312) 255-3680
e-mail: mailto:pubprog@newberry.org