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Caltech

Exploration: The Globe and Beyond

Monday, April 22, 2019
4:00pm to 5:00pm
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Dabney Hall 110 (Treasure Room)
Maps, Monsters, and Natural History in the Age of Exploration
Surekha Davies, Cultural Historian and InterAmericas Fellow at the John Carter Brown Library,

How can we recognize scientific images from other periods and cultures, without assuming that images that look different from what we expect are inaccurate or imaginary? In this talk I explore this question through sea monsters and Patagonian giants, two life-forms that appear frequently on European maps from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I show how we can use images on maps in order to better understand the relationship between visual diagrams and the study of nature in the age of exploration.

For more information, please contact Fran Tise by phone at 626-395-3609 or by email at [email protected].