-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        Thoreau and Maps public lecture: 16 October 2009
Date:   Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:03:28 -0400
From:   Matthew Edney <[log in to unmask]>
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To:     map history discussion list <[log in to unmask]>,
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Dear All:

I am very pleased to announce the following public presentation:

*Thoreau’s Cartographic Explorations: Imaging Nature through Maps*

John W. Hessler, Senior Cartographic Librarian, Geography and Map
Division, Library of Congress

Mattson/New York Times Lecture, Osher Map Library and Smith Center for
Cartographic Education, University of Southern Maine

Hannaford Lecture Hall, Abromson Center, University of Southern Maine
(Portland Campus)

7pm, 16 October 2009

Free; open to the public

Henry David Thoreau is famous as the author of /Walden/ (1854), /The
Maine Woods/ (1864), and other classics of American transcendental
literature. Less well known is his work as a land surveyor in Concord,
Mass., work that allowed him to examine nature at length and in detail.
Still unexamined is his interest in the early European maps of North
America. Thoreau gave a brief history of the mapping of New England in
his /Cape Cod/ (1865). He also carefully redrew to scale maps by
Champlain, Wytfliet, Ortelius, and other early writers on the New World
for his unpublished “Canadian” and “Indian” notebooks. Mr. Hessler’s
recent identification of two copies of Champlain’s maps as being
Thoreau’s handiwork has led him to investigate this hitherto
unappreciated aspect of Thoreau’s life and works, and to locate other
map copies by Thoreau now missing from the notebooks. These cartographic
explorations, especially with respect to the recording of indigenous
toponyms, informed Thoreau’s notions of the American wilderness and his
environmental imagination. This lecture is the first public presentation
of this exciting, new research.

N.B. We hope to feature some of the maps related to Thoreau's work in
the Osher Map Library’s exhibition, /American Treasures/, which opens on
15 October.

This public presentation is part of the celebration of the reopening of
the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education at the
University of Southern Maine. In addition to the lecture and exhibition,
this celebration includes a one-day conference -- New Directions in the
Study of Early American Cartographies -- on 17 October and public open
house and ribbon-cutting on 18 October.

For more information, please go to http:/www.usm.maine.edu/maps

Sincerely,

Matthew Edney


--
Matthew H. Edney
http://www.usm.maine.edu/~edney

Osher Chair in the History of Cartography
University of Southern Maine
http://www.usm.maine.edu/maps

Director, History of Cartography Project
University of Wisconsin-Madison
http://www.geography.wisc.edu/histcart/