Event Details
About this Event
This event is held in conjunction with the exhibition Multiple Middles: Maps from Early Modern Times, which is available online and on view in the Special Collections Gallery in Morris Library from February 8 through May 14.
This talk is in memory of Ed Redmond, UD alumnus and Library of Congress map specialist, who passed away last year.
The history of the earliest contact between the peoples of Europe and the Indigenous cultures of the Americas produced some of the most historically important manuscripts and rare pieces of indigenous mapping ever created.
The Nahuatl and Mixtec cultures of Mexico made maps unlike those of Europeans, and used a complex combination of hieroglyphs, iconography and land measurement to produce beautiful examples of cartography that are at once histories, legal documents and ethnobotanical records.
During this talk, John Hessler will introduce attendees to the materials, language and artists who made three of the most important of these cartographic histories and manuscripts to survive from the early 16th century—the Oztoticpac Lands Map, the Codex Quetzalecatzin, and the Huexotzinco Codex.
John Hessler is curator of the Jay I. Kislak Collection of the Archaeology and History of the Early Americas at the Library of Congress, and a lecturer in bioarchaeology in the Odyssey Program and the Osher Institute at Johns Hopkins University. His research focuses on the linguistics of the enthnobotany of the ancient Maya and Nahua and on traditional plant classification schemes in the Amazon. He has authored numerous books and articles, including the New York Times bestseller, MAP: Exploring the World.
This virtual event is open to the public.
Registration is required. Once registered, you will receive an email with details on how to join the event via Zoom.