[ISHMap-List] "Mapping Nature across the Americas: " An NEH Summer Institute, July/August 2014

[Anne Cullen]

Mapping Nature across the Americas: A NEH Summer Institute for College and University Faculty
July 14 – August 15, 2014
The Newberry Library
Chicago, IL
The Newberry Library’s Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography is now accepting applications for its 2014 NEH summer institute for college and university faculty and up to three graduate students, “Mapping Nature across the Americas.” The four-week institute will be led by James Akerman (a geographer and Director of the Smith Center) and Kathleen Brosnan (an environmental historian and Travis Chair of Modern American History at the University of Oklahoma). Participants will explore the interplay between mapping and environmental knowledge across the Americas from the transatlantic encounter into the 21st century. By bringing together environmental history and the history of cartography, this institute will illuminate their essential relationship, broadening participating summer scholars’ understanding of how maps and depictions of nature shaped and were shaped
by diverse cultural and historical contexts. The institute will stretch comfortable disciplinary boundaries, introducing participants to perspectives they seldom encounter in professional gatherings or within the confines of their own academic departments. At the same time, our concentration on the Americas sharpens the Institute’s geographic focus while still allowing participants to garner a greater comprehension of how peoples with diverse histories developed distinctive traditions in their encounters with and mapping of nature. In addition to reading and discussing recent scholarship, participating summer scholars will study a wide range of original maps in group settings. They will enhance their research skills by pursuing individual projects making use of the Newberry’s rich holdings of cartography, history, geography, art, literature, and the history of printing from the 15th
to the 21st centuries.


Applications are encouraged from college and university faculty teaching a broad range of courses and involved in a diversity of research topics. Qualified independent scholars and scholars engaged in museum work are also eligible to apply. A limited number of spaces are also available for full-time graduate students in the humanities. Successful applicants will receive a stipend of $3900 to help defray travel and housing expenses.


Completed applications must be postmarked no later than March 4, 2014.
Details and application materials are also available at www.newberry.org/mappingnature.


For information and application materials please contact:


Anne Cullen
The Hermon Dunlap Smith Center
The Newberry Library
60 W. Walton Street
Chicago, IL 60610
cullena at newberry.org
312-255-3657
 

Anne E. Cullen
Program Assistant
Smith Center | Newberry Library
60 W. Walton St. | Chicago, IL 60610
312.255.3657
www.newberry.org