HIST 6301: Colloquium in Transatlantic Exploration, Discovery, and the History of Cartography

 

Instructor: Buisseret, Francaviglia, and Reinhartz

Colloquium Description This course is an examination of the processes by which cultures in the continents bordering the Atlantic ocean have explored and claimed to have discovered new locations, often with significant consequences to the peoples and locations encountered. Because such expansion involves the use and creation of maps, the colloquium employs and interprets them as significant primary sources. Given the breadth of the subject matter and materials, the actual content and focus of any particular course taught as the colloquium will vary depending on the interest and expertise of the instructor.

Individual course descriptions are available and include the following as taught by:

Dr. Buisseret "Colonial Cartographies"

Dr. Francaviglia "The Charting of Empire"

Dr. Reinhartz "The Historical Process of Transatlantic Discovery"

Goals and Objectives Although content varies, the colloquium has several goals. This course will enable students to understand the concept and cultural consequences of exploration and discovery, the actual process by which Atlantic cultures explored and discovered "new" locations, the rich cartographic and other primary source record/legacy of such exploration and discovery, and the rich secondary interpretive literature on this subject and its relationship to the primary cartographic resources.

An overriding goal of the colloquium, then, is for students to master the use of primary mapping in a transatlantic context.

Examples of Readings

• Alba, duke of, ed., Mapas espa๑oles de Am้rica siglos XVI-XVII (Madrid, 1951)

• John Allen (ed.), North American Exploration (Lincoln, 1997)

• Leo Bagrow, History of Cartography (Chicago, 1985)

• Jeannette D. Black, ed., The Blathwayt Atlas (Providence, 1970)

• Vincent Cassidy, The Sea Around Them (Baton Rouge, 1965)

• Armando Cortesao, et. Al., Portugaliae Momumenta Cartographica ( 6 vols., Lisbon, 1960-62)

• Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange (Westport, 1972)

• W.P. Cumming, Skelton and Quinn, eds., The Discovery of North America (New York, 1971)

• E. Fite, and A. Freeman, eds., A Book of Old Maps (New York, 1926)

• Anthony Grafton, New Worlds, Ancient Texts (Cambridge, 1995)

• J.R. Hale, Renaissance Exploration (New York, 1968)

• J.B., Harley, Maps and the Columbian Encounter (Milwaukee, 1990)

• Derek Howse and Michael Sanderson, The Sea Chart (New York, 1971)

• Egon Klemp, ed., America in Maps (New York, 1976)

• P.J. Marshall and Glyndwr Williams, The Great Map of Mankind (Cambridge, 1982)

• Michael Mollat du Jourdin, et al., (Sea Charts of the Early Explorers (London, 1984)

• Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea (Boston, 1942)

• Kenneth Nebenzahl, The Atlas of Columbus and the Great Discoveries (Chicago, 1990)

• Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World (Cambridge, 1993)

• J.H. Parry, The Establishment of the European Hegemony: 1415-1715 New York, 1961)

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• David R. Quinn, North America from the Earliest of Discovery to the First Settlements (New York, 1977)

• _____. Set Fair for Roanoke (Chapel Hill, 1985)

• Dennis Reinhartz, The Cartographer and the Literati (Lewiston, 1997)

• Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of Paradise (New York, 1992)

• Norman J.W. Thrower, Maps & Civilization (Chicago, 1996)

• Wilcomb E. Washburn, "The Meaning of ‘Discovery’ in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries," The American Historical Review LXVIII (October 1992): 1-21

• John Noble Wilford, The Mapmakers (New York, 1981)

Journals:

• Imago Mundi

• Meracator’s World

• Terrae Incognitae