Key themes
Material Culture, Map Circulation and Use, Early Modern History, Materiality, Visual Culture, Reception History
Summary
This PhD project examines map encounters, focusing on cartographic experiences documented in early modern textual and visual sources. Traditionally, historians have concentrated on the content of maps and their makers. More recently, however, scholarship has shifted towards materiality and the material culture of maps (e.g., Dillon 2007; Carlton 2015; Brückner 2017; Rossetto 2019). This project explores a new encounter-oriented approach to maps. By analysing the spaces where maps were kept and used, the people involved, and the (sensory) experiences associated with these encounters, the project sheds new light on the circulation and use of maps in the past. The central research question is: how common and widespread were cartographic objects in early modern society?
To answer this question, the project focuses on the Dutch Republic – one of the European centres for maps in the early modern period. By tracing, collecting, and analysing these in visual and textual sources – including paintings, prints, travel journals, inventories, advertisements, and other records of map encounters – the project analyses what happened to cartographic objects after they were produced. How and why were they used? By whom, and in what ways? Addressing these questions will contribute to a deeper understanding of the cultural history and societal significance of cartographic objects in early modern Dutch society.
Supervisor(s): prof. dr. Bram Vannieuwenhuyze, dr. Djoeke van Netten
Affiliated with the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture (AHM), Explokart research group and Allard Pierson, Amsterdam
Duration of appointment: 2022-2027