CLHUMHI200 - Mapping an Atlantic World
In 1500, following Columbus’s voyages, the Atlantic Ocean moved from the periphery to the center of European world maps. This marked a paradigm shift in how the world was mapped and the opening of what historians call the Atlantic World. Maps and mapmakers played a central role in offering a vivid new image of the Atlantic Ocean and promoting an interconnected Atlantic World. The Atlantic World is a concept encompassing the extensive movement of “people, plants, pathogens, products and cultural practices” across the Atlantic Ocean. Commerce, colonialism and religious missions were among its key drivers. They profoundly affected Africa, the Americas and Europe and resulted in the violent forced migration of enslaved Africans and the forcible relocation of indigenous Americans. Examine how the earliest surviving maps not only captured but shaped history, depicting trade, colonization, evangelism and the movement of people, and revealing powerful arguments about the possibility of an interconnected Atlantic World.
Course Details
Alida Metcalf, Ph.D., is the Harris Masterson, Jr., Professor of History at Rice University and a historian of Brazil and the Atlantic World. Dr. Metcalf teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Latin American history and graduate seminars on port cities in the Atlantic World and colonial Latin America. She authored “Family and Frontier in Colonial Brazil,” “Go-betweens and the Colonization of Brazil,” and, with Eve M. Duffy, “The Return of Hans Staden: A Go-between in the Atlantic World.” With Farès el-Dahdah, she developed the digital humanities project imagineRio, which maps and illustrates the social and urban evolution of Rio de Janeiro from 1500 to the present. Dr. Metcalf’s most recent book is “Mapping an Atlantic World” (2020). She has also developed the Mapping an Atlantic World website. Dr. Metcalf is currently writing a history of water in Rio de Janeiro.
On Campus
This course will be delivered on campus / in person. Parking and room information will be sent prior to the class start date.
- The Atlantic on the periphery of ancient and medieval world maps
- Why 1500 and not 1492 broke the mapping paradigm
- What is the history of chart-making, and how were charts made?
- How the Gutenberg Press also revolutionized mapmaking
- The imagery on maps—where does it come from and what does it mean?
- How maps became ephemeral
Department of History, Rice University