OML Grand Reopening, 16-18 October 2009
Please join us for some or all of the great events scheduled over three days -- a lecture, a conference, and an open house -- to celebrate the reopening of the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education after its reconstruction and expansion!
Friday, 16 October 2009, 7:00pm
Thoreau, His Maps, and His Image of Nature
New York Times/Mattson Lecture
John W. Hessler (Senior Cartographic Librarian, Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress) [a link to Mr. Hessler's brief biography is provided below]
Hannaford Lecture Hall, Abromson Center
Free and 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 that his work as a land surveyor in Concord, Mass., 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also carefully redrew to scale maps by Champlain, Wytfliet, Ortelius, and other early writers on the New World for his unpublished “Canadian” and “Indian” notebooks.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. Mr. Hessler is a broadly educated historian whose work ranges from archaeological investigations, to translations of Latin texts found on Renaissance maps, to sophisticated mathematical models of distortions in early maps.
Saturday, 17 October 2009, 8:30am-4:30pm
New Directions in the Study of Early American Cartographies
Cohen Education Center, Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education
The inaugural meeting of the Maine Forum for Map History, held under the aegis of the Osher Chair in the History of Cartography, explores new approaches to the cartographies of the early Americas (to 1840).
- 8:30am / Coffee and pastries
- 9:15am / Introduction. Matthew Edney (Osher Chair in the History of Cartography, University of Southern Maine)
- 9:30am / Acts, Artifacts, and Arguments: The Natures of American Indian Cartographies. William Gustav Gartner (Lecturer in Geography, University of Wisconsin–Madison)
- 11:00am / Mapping French Colonial Territory: Indians, Traders, Missionaries, and géographes du roy. Jean-François Palomino (Map Curator, Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Québec)
- 12:00pm / Lunch and guided tours of the library’s new facilities and exhibition, "American Treasures."
- 2:00pm / Boundaries and Settlements: Mapping Occupation in Colonial British America. Max Edelson (Associate Professor of History, University of Virginia)
- 3:30pm / Cartographies of Independence: Criollos Represent Gran Colombia in a Changing Atlantic World, 1808-1845. Lina Del Castillo (Assistant Professor of History, Iowa State University)
Space is limited and registration is required. USM Students: FREE (but must still register). Other students: $25. All others: $75. To register, either call 207.780.5960 (may not work, so please fax) or follow the link at the bottom of the page.
Accommodation: A small number of rooms are available at a reduced rate of $149/night per room (sleeps 1-4 people) from the Eastland Hotel, Portland; call 207.775.5411 and cite “Osher Map Conference,” before 15 September. Portland has many other hotels, although participants should note that this is a busy time of year.
Sunday, 18 October 2009, 2:30pm–5:00pm
Official Reopening: Ribbon Cutting and Reception
Glickman Family Library Arcade and Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education
- 2:30 pm / Reception begins in the Cohen Education Center
- 3:00 pm / Ribbon Cutting (Arcade)
- 3:30 pm / Open house and guided tours of the new facilities and exhibition, with drawing for door prizes at 4:30pm
Registration for "New Directions in the Study of Early American Cartographies"
