Date: Thursday, March 27th, 2025
Location: The Newberry Library | 60 West Walton St | Chicago IL | Google Maps
Time: 6:00 – 7:00 pm CT (Presentation)
Title: Four Points: A Cartographic History of Direction
Speaker: Jerry Brotton
Abstract: Historian Jerry Brotton explores the cartographic history of the cardinal directions, and how they are changing in our current online geospatial world.
North, south, east and west: almost all societies use the four cardinal directions to orientate themselves, to understand who they are by projecting where they are. For millennia, these four directions have been the foundation of our navigation and exploration and are central to the imaginative, moral and political geography of virtually every culture in the world. Yet they are far more subjective and various – sometimes contradictory – than we might realize. In this trans-historical and cross-cultural talk, Jerry Brotton explores the cartographic history of the cardinal directions, and how they are changing in our current online geospatial world.
Co-sponsored by the Center for Renaissance Studies and the Hermon Dunlop Center for the History of Cartography.
Speaker Bio: Jerry Brotton is Professor of Renaissance Studies at the University of London. He is a writer, curator and broadcaster and author of over ten books, including Trading Territories: Mapping the Early Modern World (1997), Global Interests: Renaissance Art between East and West with Lisa Jardine (2000), The Sale of the Late King’s Goods: Charles I and his Art Collection (2006), This Orient Isle: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World (2016) and the bestselling and award-winning A History of the World in Twelve Maps, (2012) which has been translated into twenty languages. He curated ‘Penelope’s Labour: Weaving Words and Images’ (2011) and ‘Talking Maps’ (2019) and presented the three-part BBC TV series, ‘Maps: Power, Plunder and Possession (2010). His latest book is Four Points of the Compass: the Unexpected History of Direction (Grove Atlantic) and he is the presenter of the podcast, ‘What’s Your Map?’
Date: Thursday, April 17th, 2025
Location: The Newberry Library | 60 West Walton St | Chicago IL | Google Maps
Time: 5:30 pm CT (Social Time)
6:00 pm CT (Presentation)
Title: Finding Food: How We Map and Talk About Food Access in Chicago and Beyond
Speaker: Daniel Block
Speaker Bio: Daniel Block is a professor of geography at Chicago State University and the coordinator of the Fred Blum Neighborhood Assistance Center, as well as an adjunct professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University and the School of Urban Planning at UIC. He has completed many food access studies, including the Northeastern Illinois Community Food Security Assessment, a large-scale food access study of the six-county Chicago metro area. He is a past president of the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society. In 2018, he was named a fellow of the American Association of Geographers and is the co-author of Chicago: A Food Biography, a history of Chicago told through its food system, published by Rowman and Littlefield.
Date: Thursday, May 15th, 2025
Location: The Newberry Library | 60 West Walton St | Chicago IL | Google Maps
Time: 5:30 pm CT (Social Time)
6:00 pm CT (Presentation)
Title: Maps, Biogeography, and Species Extinction
Speaker: Richard Condit