This final SEES Fall seminar presentation is given by guest speaker Dr. Brian Stauffer, Library Director, Oregon Historical Society
Mapping "el Orbe Católico": Religion, Empire, and Cartography in the North American Borderlands
Archival maps of the North American borderlands, far from neutral, “scientific” representations of space, were tools of conquest, empire, and commerce. Yet cartographic artifacts are seldom straightforward in their relationship to imperial power. Religious conceptions of space, especially those indebted to the burgeoning Catholic globalism of the Counter Reformation, complemented, modified, and sometimes conflicted with those underwriting Spanish, British, or American territorial expansion. Further, religious cultures of cartography were themselves modified in dialogue with the powerful Indigenous cultures of the continent. This talk will consider the outsized role of friars, priests, missionaries, and other religious in the cartography of the era and analyze the religious meanings of their maps, with an emphasis on Mexico and the American Southwest.
Link to full list of speakers