The Kenneth Nebenzahl, Jr., Lectures in the History of Cartography
Since 1966, the Nebenzahl Lectures have been dedicated to cultivating a community for the study of maps and their history. Endowed and founded by rare book and map dealers Kenneth and Jossy Nebenzahl in honor of their son, Kenneth Jr., the lectures were the first public lecture series dedicated to the history of cartography.
Understanding the relationship between maps, history, and people.
Convened every three years, these lectures invite an interdisciplinary group of scholars from around the world to consider the relationship between maps and the societies that create them. Many of these lectures have become monographs and edited volumes that have shaped the field of map history for the past six decades. From the lectures, publications, and engagement with the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for Cartography’s and the Newberry Library’s collections, the Nebenzahl series has been a key part of expanding the study of map history to a field used in every discipline in the humanities.
Mapping from Mexico
The 22nd Nebenzahl Lecture Series
Mapping from Mexico: New Narratives for the History of Cartography
October 16-18, 2025
The 2025 Nebenzahl Lectures continue to promote new thinking in map history by asking how orienting our stories from Mexico, looking out toward the rest of the world, challenges common narratives and popular assumptions in the history of mapmaking. Despite the prominent role mapping in Mexico has played, cartographic histories are often told from a European perspective. But how do the stories we tell, methodological assumptions we make, and categories we define about maps and map history change when we treat sites of production and reception in Mexico—from Mexico City, Oaxaca, and Puebla to the borderlands—with the same specificity map history has given to European centers?
Additional activities will be offered throughout the event, including a map fair, a papermaking workshop, discussions with local artists, exhibition tours, and presentations of unique and important maps from the Newberry’s collections.
Past Series Resources
Publications
All published volumes of the Kenneth Nebenzahl, Jr., Lectures in the History of Cartography are available online.
- James R. Akerman, ed., Decolonizing the Map: Cartography from Colony to Nation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017)
- Richard J.A. Talbert, ed., Ancient Perspectives: Maps and Their Place in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012)
- James R. Akerman, ed., The Imperial Map: Cartography and the Mastery of Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009)
- James R. Akerman, ed., Cartographies of Travel and Navigation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006)
- Mary Sponberg Pedley, The Commerce of Cartography: Making Marketing Maps in Eighteenth-Century France and England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005)
- David Buisseret, ed., Envisioning the City: Six Studies in Urban Cartography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998)
- Malcolm G. Lews, ed., Cartographic Encounters: Perspectives on Native American Mapmaking and Map Use (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998)
- David Buisseret, ed., Rural Images: Estate Maps in the Old and New Worlds (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996)
- David Buisseret, ed., Monarchs, Ministers, and Maps: The Emergence of Cartography as a Tool of Government in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992)
- David Woodward, ed., Art and Cartography: Six Historical Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987)
- J.B. Harley, Barbara Bartz Petchenik, and Lawrence V. Towner, Mapping the American Revolutionary War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978)
- David Woodward, ed., Five Centuries of Map Printing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975)
- William P. Cumming, British Maps of Colonial America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974)
- R.A. Skelton, Maps: A Historical Survey of Their Study and Collecting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972)
- Kathleen A. Brosnan and James R. Akerman, Mapping Nature across the Americas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021)
- Ernesto Capello and Julia B. Rosenbaum, eds., Cartographic Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Nineteenth-Century Americas (New York: Routledge, 2021)
- Martin Brückner, Early American Cartographies, published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011)