Geography and Domestic Recreation in Early Modern Europe
Speaker:
Stephanie Stillo, University of Kansas and 2013 Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR)/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow, Library of Congress, Preservation Research and Testing Division
October 28, 2013
Video:
View video (55 minutes)
About the Lecture:
How world geography shifted from professional knowledge to general interest in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe, looking at domestic activities designed to encourage the collection and memorization of geography by non-professionals, including recipes for coloring maps, botanical texts, interactive prints, games, and geographic memorization cards. Beyond an educational pastime, these activities neatly divided the globe into the familiar continental structure of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America -- categorizing various human communities into "useful" comparative frameworks. Using equipment in the Library's Preservation Directorate, identified pigments on Library of Congress printed cartographic images demonstrate the availability of materials Europeans found necessary for such pastimes.
Stephanie Stillo conducting x-ray fluorescence analysis
of Richard Blome, A Geographical Description of the Four
Parts of the World (1670), from the Rare Book and
Special Collections Division
About the Speaker:
Stephanie Stillo received her M.A. from Western Washington University in 2009, with major fields in European History and Women's Studies. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Kansas with an emphasis on urbanization in the Atlantic World and minor fields in Latin American History and Gender Theory. Stillo has received many prestigious research grants and fellowships, including the Truman Foundation Fellowship for International Research, the Tinker Field Research Grant, and the Council for European Studies Research Fellowship. During 2012-13, Stillo was a visiting fellow at the Library of Congress through a CLIR/Mellon Fellowship. While at the Library of Congress, Stillo worked with scientists in the Preservation Directorate analyzing printed maps in Rare Books and Special Collections Division and the Geography and Maps Division.
