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CANCELLED – Lecture Jerry Brotton (Queen Mary University of London)

Due to unforeseen family circumstances Prof. Brotton’s lecture News of the World: Cartography in the Age of Globalization has unfortunately been cancelled.

Date: March 11, 2014
Time: 15.00 – 17.00
Venue: University of Amsterdam, Bijzonder collecties – Nina van Leerzaal, Oude Turfmarkt 129, Amsterdam
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At a time when the Internet is locked in a battle over dominance of virtual geospatial applications, this lecture will situate the current ‘map wars’ within a wider historical and cultural context. Ranging from the Greeks to Google Earth and with specific attention to the early modern period, it surveys how the globe has been mapped by different cultures over time, and what this means for our current understanding of globalisation. Far from being purely scientific objects, world maps appear to be unavoidably partial and subjective, intimately bound up with the systems of power, authority and creativity of particular moments and places. But if the paper map is a thing of the past, then what of the map’s future, and how will we map the world around us?

Jerry Brotton is Professor of Renaissance Studies in the Department of English at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of numerous books, including Trading Territories (1997), Global Interests (2000, co-written with Lisa Jardine), The Renaissance Bazaar (2002), The Sale of the Late King’s Goods (2006), and A History of the World in Twelve Maps (2012). He presented BBC4’s three-part television series, ‘Maps: Power, Plunder and Possession’ (2010), and co-curated the internationally acclaimed exhibition ‘Penelope’s Labour: Weaving Words and Images’, at the Venice Biennale (2011). He is internationally recognised as an expert in the history of cartography and east-west cultural exchange in the early modern period. His latest project is a book on Shakespeare and Islam.

This lecture is organized in cooperation with OSK

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