Sixteenth-century European mapmakers read contemporary travel accounts and devised distinctive motifs for the inhabitants of different parts of the Americas. They marketed their works as uniquely suited for comparing societies and the influence of environment on human bodies, temperaments and mental abilities. At a time when some readers were complaining that there was too much to know, maps made peoples of different regions memorably distinct from one another. This paper shows how mapmakers inserted the concept of the monster – used to denote beings that broke the category of the human – into discussions about peoples of the Americas. Such motifs as Patagonian giants and beings with heads in their chests have little credibility when viewed through modern eyes, and are usually dismissed as exaggeration, imagination and error. By contrast, I shall analyze mapmakers’ renditions of monstrous peoples historically, asking questions that are not based on modern cultural assumptions, to reveal aspects of Renaissance epistemologies for phenomena that lay at the limits of possibility. In so doing, I indicate a road map for re-configuring our understanding of early modern science as a visual pursuit.

Surekha Davies is Jay I. Kislak Fellow at the Library of Congress and Assistant Professor of European History at Western Connecticut State University.

This lecture is made possible through the support of the College Arts and Humanities Institute, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Office of the Provost, and the Department of History. There will be coffee, tea and light refreshments.

Cost: Free

For more information contact:

Renaissance Studies Program
[email protected]