Menu
Return to the JCB in the News page.
- The John Carter Brown Library at Brown University announces the a new exhibition on Drugs from the Colonies, September 2011
- The John Carter Brown Library at Brown University Annouces the Acquisition of an Important New Guarani Manuscript, July 2009
- The John Carter Brown Library at Brown University Joins Partners of the World Digital Library in Paris, April 2009
-
The Library Sponsors Colloquium on Atlantic History, March 2009
-
Ongoing Online Publication Continues Print Tradition, September 2008
- Online Exhibition Opens with Exhibition on the Islamic Encounters with the West, October 2008
-
The John Carter Brown Library at Brown University Awards Thirty-Nine Research Fellowships For 2008–2009, August 2008
-
The John Carter Brown Library at Brown University Awards Forty-Three Research Fellowships For 2007–2008, September 2007
-
Slavery & Justice: First Online Exhibition of the John Carter Brown Library, September 2007
-
Library Publishes New Book Based on Manuscript of John Russell Bartlett, July 2006
-
New Exhibition Features Role of France in the American Revolution, June 2006
-
Library Publishes New Book Based on Diaries of John Carter Brown, February 2006
-
Edward L. Widmer Named Director of the John Carter Brown Library, January 2006
-
Maury A. Bromsen bequeathes $4 Million to the John Carter Brown Library, January 2006
-
The John Carter Brown Library Publishes New Work on Maritime History, October 2005
-
John Carter Brown Library Launches the Archive of Early American Images, May 2005
September 2008
The John Carter Brown Library at Brown University Awards Thirty-Nine Research Fellowships For 2008–2009
The John Carter Brown Library, an independently funded and administered institution for advanced research in history and the humanities, located at Brown University since 1901, has awarded fellowships to thirty-nine scholars from around the world for the 2008–2009 academic year.
All of the fellows will be doing research in the Library's renowned collection of primary materials relating to the European discovery, exploration, settlement, and development of the New World, the African contribution to the development of this hemisphere, and indigenous responses to the European incursion.
Ten scholars received post-doctoral long-term fellowships (five to ten months), three of these funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), an agency of the Federal government. One long-term fellowship is underwritten by the J. M. Stuart Fund. (The J. M. Stuart Fellowship is reserved for a graduate student at Brown University.) Additional support for six long-term fellowships has been granted to the Library by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Donald L. Saunders; the InterAmericas Fund (for research on the history of the West Indies and the Caribbean basin); and R. David Parsons (for the study of the history of exploration and discovery).
An additional twenty-nine scholars will be in residence during the year for periods ranging from two to four months. These fellows will be receiving support from a number of Library endowed funds, some of which have thematic restrictions. The Jeannette D. Black Memorial Fellowship is for research on the history of cartography and visual representations of the New World; Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellowships are for research in the comparative history of the colonial Americas; the Alexander O. Vietor Memorial Fellowship and the Marie L. and William R. Hartland Fellowship focus on early maritime history; the Ruth and Lincoln Ekstrom Fellowship specializes in the history of women and the family in the Americas; the William Reese Company Fellowship is for research in bibliography and the history of printing; and the Touro National Heritage Trust Fellowship supports research on some aspect of the Jewish experience in the New World before 1825. Maria Elena Cassiet Fellowships are restricted to scholars who are citizens and permanent residents of countries in Spanish America. The Maury A. Bromsen Fellowship is focused on colonial Spanish American history. The José Amor y Vázquez Fund supports projects relating to Spanish and Spanish-American subjects.
Other fellowships are available without topical restrictions, supported by the Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Foundation Fund; the Helen Watson Buckner Memorial Fund; the Paul W. McQuillen Memorial Fund; the Barbara S. Mosbacher Fund; the Charles H. Watts Memorial Fund; and the Norman Fiering Fund. Two fellowships are underwritten by annual gifts from the John Carter Brown Library Associates.
Of the thirty-nine fellows invited this year, ten are coming from foreign countries, and fifteen are completing work on doctoral dissertations. According to the Director of the Library, Ted Widmer, “The eternal mission of the John Carter Brown Library is to make its incomparable collection available to the world’s scholars, and to provide the wherewithal that will allow them to journey from distant places to Providence.” A list of fellows, their current institutional affiliations, and the titles of their projects follows. The number in parentheses indicates the number of months each will be in residence at the Library.
• Ian Aebel, University of New Hampshire
“Constructing History, Producing America: Anglo-American Historical Thought,
Historiography, and the Birth of American History in the Early Modern English
Atlantic World, c. 1485 to c. 1714”
Jeannette D. Black Memorial Fellow (2)
• Renzo Baldasso, Smithsonian Institute
“Erhard Ratdolt and the Visual Dimension of Early Printed Books”
William Reese Company Fellow (2)
• Matteo Binasco, National University of Ireland, Galway, IRELAND
“Irish Catholic Priests in Rome and the Atlantic World, 1622–1668”
Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow (2)
• Eva Botella Ordinas, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, SPAIN
“Debating Empires: Spain and Britain in Darien, 1690s–1700”
Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow (3)
• M. Andrea Campetella, Rutgers University
“Indian Brave New Worlds: Adaptation and Reinvention on the Southern Frontier
of the Spanish Empire, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries”
Donald L. Saunders / Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Research Fellow (4)
• Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, University of Texas, Austin
“Typology in the Atlantic World”
Andrew W. Mellon Senior Research Fellow (7)
• Vincent Carretta, University of Maryland
“Biography of Phillis Wheatley”
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow (5)
• Fernando Cervigón, Universidad Monteávila, VENEZUELA
“Aportes linguisticos y etnográficos de los misioneros del siglo XVI en Hispanoamérica”
Maria Elena Cassiet Fellow (2)
• Nicholas Dew, McGill University, CANADA
“Networks of Knowledge in the French Atlantic World, 1660 to 1730”
InterAmericas Fellow (5)
• Christina Dickerson, Vanderbilt University
“A Death in the Woods: The Jumonville Affair and Its Consequences”
John Carter Brown Library Associates Fellow (2)
• Elizabeth Dillon, Northeastern University
“Gender, Sex, and Caribbean Colonialism: Social Reproduction and Modernity in the
Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World”
Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow (3)
• Rebecca Earle, University of Warwick, UNITED KINGDOM
“Diet and Colonial Identity in Spanish America”
Ruth and Lincoln Ekstrom Fellow (2)
• Carolyn Eastman, University of Texas, Austin
“Learning to See: Gender in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World”
Ruth and Lincoln Ekstrom Fellow (4)
• Carlos Gálvez-Peña, Columbia University
“Writing History to Reform the Empire: The Religious Discourse in Seventeenth-Century Peru”
José Amor y Vázquez Fellow (3)
• Harikrishnan Gopinadhan Nair, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, MEXICO
“Contra Imperio: El discurso de derecho natural y la autonomia de los indios americanos”
Norman Fiering Fellow (3)
• Viviana Grieco, University of Missouri, Kansas City
“On the King's Power and His Subjects' Money: The Political Culture of the Viceroyalty of
Rio de la Plata, 1784–1809”
José Amor y Vázquez Fellow (2)
• Evelina Guzauskyte, Wellesley College
“The Places of Places: Naming and Ordering the World in Christopher Columbus' Diario de a Bordo”
Marie L. and William R. Hartland Memorial Fellow (2)
• Brian F. Head, Professor Emeritus, Universidade do Minho, PORTUGAL
“Early Developments in Brazilian Portuguese: Lexical Features of the 16th and 17th Centuries”
Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow (2)
• Erika Hosselkus, Tulane University
“Faith and Final Acts: Indigenous Religion and Death in Colonial Huexotzingo and Tlaxcala”
Maury A. Bromsen Fellow (2)
• Kristin Huffine, Northern Illinois University
“Producing Christians from Half-Men and Beasts: Jesuit Ethnography and Guaraní Response in
Colonial Río de la Plata”
National Endowment for the Humanities / Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Research Fellow (5)
• Takashi Iwasaki, University of Tsukuba, JAPAN
“A Study of the Dialectic Process of the Aztec Human Sacrifice”
Helen Watson Buckner Memorial Fellow (4)
• Melissa R. Katz, Brown University
“Interior Motives: The Virgen abridera in Late Medieval and Early Modern Iberia”
J. M. Stuart Fellow (5)
• Julie Kim, Fordham University
“Matters of Taste: Economies of Food and Race in the Early Atlantic World”
InterAmericas Fellow (6.5)
• Steve Mentz, St. John's University (NY)
“Shipwreck and the Sea, 1589 to 1719”
R. David Parsons Fellow (9)
• Chris M. Parsons, University of Toronto, CANADA
“Plants and Peoples in Early Canada”
John Carter Brown Library Associates Fellow (2)
• Jason Payton, University of Maryland
“From the Edges of the Empire: Cultures of Piracy and Letters in the Colonial Americas”
Alexander O. Vietor Memorial Fellow (2)
• Franco Pierno, University of Toronto, CANADA
“Diego Torres de Bollo and Early Jesuit Missions in Peru and Paraguay”
Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Foundation Fellow (2.5)
• Fabricio Prado, Emory University
“In the Shadow of Empires: Trans-Imperial Interaction, Identity, and Sovereignty in Rio de la Plata, 1750–1830”
Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow (3)
• Michele Reid, Georgia State University
“Caribbean Crossings: Comparative Black Emigration in the Age of Revolution”
Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow (3)
• Monica Ricketts, Long Island University
“Ideas of Power, Merit, and Equality in the Hispanic World, 1700–1830”
Paul W. McQuillen Memorial Fellow (2)
• Kathryn Sampeck, Illinois State University
“Manuscript Traditions of the Greater Nahua Area and Mesoamerican Political Economy
Before and After Conquest”
Donald L. Saunders / Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Research Fellow (5)
• Peer Schmidt, Universität Erfurt, GERMANY
“Religion in New Spain (1760–1820): The Social Knowledge of the Clergy Concerning Religiosity
at the End of the Colonial Period”
Charles H. Watts Memorial Fellow (2)
• Russell Stoermer, University of Virginia
“The Political Culture of Anglicanism in British Virginia, 1742–1760”
Charles H. Watts Memorial Fellow (4)
• Matthew Underwood, Harvard University
“Ordering Knowledge, Re-Ordering Empire: Science and the Emergence of the Commercial-
Imperial State”
Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow (2)
• Javier Villa-Flores, University of Illinois, Chicago
“Perjurers, Impersonators, and Liars: Toward a Social History of Hypocrisy in Colonial Mexico”
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow (6)
• Peter Villella, University of California, Los Angeles
“The True Heirs to Anahuac: The Creole Appropriation of Indigenous History in Eighteenth-
Century New Spain”
José Amor y Vázquez Fellow (3)
• Daniel Wewers, Harvard University
“The Idea of Separate Confederacies in Revolutionary America, 1754–1788”
Jeannette D. Black Memorial Fellow (2)
• Kelly Wisecup, University of Maryland
“Communicating Disease: Encounters of Medical Knowledge and Literary Technologies in
Colonial British America”
Barbara S. Mosbacher Fellow (3)
• Ari Zighelboim, Tulane University
“Colonial Objects, Colonial Subjects: Cultural Strategies of Viceregal Peru's Noble Incas, 1675–1825”
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow (5)
The Library also hosts a distinguished scholar from the U.K. appointed annually by The National Maritime Museum:
• Sophie Gilmartin, Royal Holloway, University of London, UNITED KINGDOM
“Letters from the Sea: Literature, Navigation, and Identity in the Writings of Nineteenth-Century
Maritime Women”
Caird North American Research Fellow (3)
In addition, the following scholars will be in official residence at the Library for varying lengths of time:
• Marie Arana, Independent Scholar
(Invited Research Scholar)
• Patricia U. Bonomi, Professor Emerita, New York University
(Invited Research Scholar, summer 2008)
• Amy Turner Bushnell, Independent Scholar
(Invited Research Scholar)
• Carol L. Delaney, Professor Emerita, Stanford University, and Research
Scholar, Department of Religious Studies, Brown University
(Invited Research Scholar)
• David M. Fitzsimons, Independent Scholar
(Invited Research Scholar)
• Jack P. Greene, Professor Emeritus, Johns Hopkins University
(Invited Research Scholar)
• Dryden G. Liddle, Open University, UNITED KINGDOM
(Invited Research Scholar, summer 2008)
• Charles C. Mann, Independent Scholar
(Invited Research Scholar)
• Gerald E. Mueller, Professor Emeritus, New Mexico State University
(Research Associate)
• James Muldoon, Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University
(Invited Research Scholar)
The John Carter Brown Library at Brown University Awards Forty-Three Research Fellowships For 2007–2008
The John Carter Brown Library, an independently funded and administered institution for advanced research in history and the humanities, located at Brown University since 1901, has awarded fellowships to forty-three scholars from around the world for the 2007–2008 academic year.
All of the fellows will be doing research in the Library's renowned collection of primary materials relating to the European discovery, exploration, settlement, and development of the New World, the African contribution to the development of this hemisphere, and indigenous responses to the European incursion.
Eight scholars received post-doctoral long-term fellowships (five to ten months), three of these funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), an agency of the Federal government. Two long-term fellowships are underwritten by the J. M. Stuart Fund. (The J. M. Stuart Fellowship is reserved for a graduate student at Brown University.) Additional support for three long-term fellowships has been granted to the Library by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
An additional thirty-five scholars will be in residence during the year for periods ranging from two to four months. These fellows will be receiving support from a number of Library endowed funds, some of which have thematic restrictions. The Jeannette D. Black Memorial Fellowship is for research on the history of cartography; Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellowships are for research in the comparative history of the colonial Americas; the Alexander O. Vietor Memorial Fellowship and the Marie L. and William R. Hartland Fellow-ship focus on early maritime history; the Ruth and Lincoln Ekstrom Fellowship specializes in the history of women and the family in the Americas; the William Reese Company Fellowship is for research in bibliography and the history of printing; and the Touro National Heritage Trust Fellowship supports research on some aspect of the Jewish experience in the New World before 1825. Maria Elena Cassiet Fellowships are restricted to scholars who are permanent residents of countries in Spanish America. The Maury A. Bromsen Fellowship is focused on colonial Spanish American history.
Other fellowships are available without topical restrictions, supported by the Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Foundation Fund; the Helen Watson Buckner Memorial Fund; the Paul W. McQuillen Memorial Fund; the Barbara S. Mosbacher Fund; the Charles H. Watts Memorial Fund; and the Norman Fiering Fund. A single fellowship each year is underwritten by annual gifts from the John Carter Brown Library Associates.
Of the forty-three fellows invited this year, nine are coming from foreign countries, and twenty-one are completing work on doctoral dissertations. According to the Director of the Library, Ted Widmer, “The eternal mission of the John Carter Brown Library is to make its incomparable collection available to the world’s scholars, and to provide the wherewithal that will allow them to journey from distant places to Providence.” A list of fellows, their current institutional affiliations, and the titles of their projects follows. The number in parentheses indicates the number of months each will be in residence at the Library.
• C.J. Alvarez, Harvard University
“The Idea of Martyrdom in New Spain”
Jeannette D. Black Memorial Fellow (4)
• Edward E. Andrews, University of New Hampshire
“Prodigal Sons: Indigenous Missionaries in the English Atlantic, 1640–1790”
Norman Fiering Fellow (2)
• Cordelia Arias Toledo, Universidad Central de Venezuela, VENEZUELA
“Reading Images from the 'Grancolombian' Period: Uses and Functions of Images in
Public and Private Life, 1820–1830”
Maria Elena Cassiet Fellow (3)
• Emily Berquist, University of Texas
“The Science of Empire: Bishop Martínez Compañón and the Hispanic Enlightenment in
Peru”
Maury A. Bromsen Fellow (2)
• Catherine Briand, Paris IV Sorbonne, FRANCE, and Université Laval, CANADA
“Encounter Scenes in 17th- and 18th-Century Travel Accounts to New France: Coming to
Shore and Crossing Boundaries”
Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow (2)
• Martín O. Carrión, Johns Hopkins University
“Sor Juana, Kircher, and Sigüenza y Góngora: The Transmission of Ideas in the New World”
Maury A. Bromsen Fellow (3)
• Paul Cohen, University of Toronto, CANADA
“Navigating the Languages of Empire: French, Amerindians, and the Politics of Linguistic
Difference in New France”
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow (8)
• Stelio Cro, King College
“The Critical Edition of the 1511 Edition of Peter Martyr's De Orbe Novo (“Of the New
World”) and Allied Documents, with English Translation”
Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Foundation Fellow (4)
• Barbara De Marco, University of California, Berkeley
“Painting the Gospel: A Study of 16th-Century Mexican Pictorial Catechisms”
Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Research Fellow (5)
• Ivonne Del Valle, University of Michigan
“Knowledge about Water: Culture, Sovereignty and Colonialism in Mexico City, 15th to
19th Century”
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow (6)
• Christa Dierksheide, University of Virginia
“The Amelioration of Slavery in the Anglo-American Imagination, 1780–1840”
Ruth and Lincoln Ekstrom Fellow (2)
• Nenita Ponce de León Elphick, Harvard University
“Cloak and Swagger: A History of Costume and Disguise in Colonial Peru”
Barbara S. Mosbacher Fellow (2)
• Robert Englebert, University of Ottawa, CANADA
“Beyond Borders: Mental Mapping and the French River World in North America, 1763–1805”
Marie L. and William R. Hartland Memorial Fellow (2)
• Denise Galarza Sepúlveda, Lafayette College
“Luxury Goods and Immigrant Evils: The Economics of Eighteenth-Century
Nationalism”
Paul W. McQuillen Memorial Fellow (2)
• Allan Greer, University of Toronto, CANADA
“Property in Colonial North America: A Comparative Study”
Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow (2)
• Laurence Hallewell, Independent Scholar
“Historical Dictionary of Brazil” and “Books and Reading in Brazil before 1808”
William Reese Company Fellow (2)
• Natalie Inman, Vanderbilt University
“Networking and Negotiation on the Trans-Appalachian Frontier: A Comparative Study of
Strategic Decision-Making in Cherokee, Chickasaw, and White Communities, 1700–1840”
Charles H. Watts Memorial Fellow (2)
• Shona Johnston, Georgetown University
“The Catholic Anglo-Atlantic in the Seventeenth Century”
Charles H. Watts Memorial Fellow (2)
• Laura Keenan, University of Pennsylvania
“The Shawnees in the Colonial Atlantic World: From Ethnogenesis to Lord Dunmore's War”
Barbara S. Mosbacher Fellow (2)
• Margaret Kim, St. John's University
“Jewish Identity and the Ethnography of the Other: Conceptualizing the Transition from
Medieval Exploration to Early Modern Expansion”
Touro National Heritage Trust Fellow (4)
• Lia Markey, University of Chicago
“The New World in Renaissance Italy: A Vicarious Conquest of Art and Nature at the Medici”
Jeannette D. Black Memorial Fellow (2)
• Rosa María Martínez de Codes, University Complutense of Madrid, SPAIN
“From Intolerance to Interaction in the British and Spanish Colonies: A Comparative
Study on Religious Christian Values”
Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow (2)
• Robert John McCaw, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
“Intricate Passages: The Poetics of Pilgrimage from Góngora to Sor Juana”
Barbara S. Mosbacher Fellow (2)
• Keith A. J. McLay, University of Chester, UNITED KINGDOM
“Military Exceptionalism and Amphibious Warfare in Northeastern Colonial America”
Caird Traveling Fellow / National Maritime Museum (3)
• John Melson, Brown University
“The Provincial Aesthetics of Place: Locality, Commerce, and Community in the
British Atlantic”
J. M. Stuart Fellow (5)
• Vanessa Mongey, University of Pennsylvania
“Cosmopolitan Republics: The Gulf of Mexico between 1783 and 1836”
Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow (2)
• Sean Moore, University of New Hampshire
“A Republic of Debt: Swift, Satire, and Colonial Sovereignty”
Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow (2)
• Janice Neri, Boise State University
“The Insect and the Image: Visualizing Nature in Early Modern Europe”
John Carter Brown Library Associates Fellow (4)
• Martin Nesvig, University of Miami
“Frontier Religion in Colonial Michoacán”
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow (5.5)
• Malyn Newitt, King's College, London, UNITED KINGDOM
“Lord Beresford and the Making of the Portuguese Atlantic, c. 1806–1830”
Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow (2)
• Mario Pereira, Brown University
“ ‘Bom Cortesão em Qualquer Corte’: Francisco de Holanda in Renaissance Europe”
J. M. Stuart Fellow (5)
• Yarí Pérez Marin, Northwestern University
“Evolving Epistemologies and New World Medical Writings”
Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow (2)
• Mónica Ricketts, Harvard University
“Pens, Politics, and Swords: The Struggle for Power in the Breakdown of the Spanish
Empire, Peru and Spain, 1760–1830”
Charles H. Watts Memorial Fellow (2)
• James Roberts, Johns Hopkins University
“Merchants, Work, and New England's Adventures to the Greater Caribbean”
Alexander O. Vietor Memorial Fellow (3)
• Justin Roberts, Johns Hopkins University
“Late Eighteenth-Century Slave Plantation Management in Barbados, Jamaica, and
Virginia”
Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow (2)
• Pedro Rueda Ramírez, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Barcelona, SPAIN
“Atlantic Books: The Networks of Book Trade and Cultural Exchange, 16th-17th
Centuries”
Paul W. McQuillen Memorial Fellow (2)
• Barry Sell, Independent Scholar
“Recovering Voices, Establishing Authority: Nahuas and Their Scholars in the Early
Americas”
Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Research Fellow (6)
• Cristina Soriano, New York University
“Papers and Rumors of Change: The Influence of Caribbean Turmoil in Venezuelan
Political Culture, 1790–1810”
Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow (2)
• George Bryan Souza, University of Texas, San Antonio
“The Dimension of Empire: The Portuguese Crown's Monopoly and Trade in Brazilian
Tobacco and Afro-Asian Commodities in the Atlantic and Global Economies, 1674 to 1776”
Helen Watson Buckner Memorial Fellow (2)
• Mark L. Thompson, Louisiana State University
“Cosmopolitan Patriots: Subjects, Nations, and Empires in the Delaware Valley, 1609 to 1681”
Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Research Fellow (5)
• Samuel Truett, University of New Mexico
“Old New World: Ruins, Borderlands, and Empire in America”
Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow (4)
• Michael Tuttle, Pennsylvania State University
“The Crews of John Paul Jones: The Common Mariner in Revolutionary America”
Marie L. and William R. Hartland Memorial Fellow (2)
• Anya Zilberstein, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“Planting Improvement: Small Farms and Scientific Agriculture in the British North
Atlantic, 1740–1820”
Paul W. McQuillen Memorial Fellow (2)
In addition, the following scholars will be in official residence at the Library for varying lengths of time:
• Mark Amsler, University of Auckland, NEW ZEALAND
(Invited Research Scholar, spring 2008)
• Jennifer L. Anderson, Stony Brook University
(Invited Research Scholar, fall 2007)
• Patricia U. Bonomi, Professor Emerita, New York University
(Invited Research Scholar, summer 2007)
• Amy Turner Bushnell, Independent Scholar
(Invited Research Scholar)
• Carol L. Delaney, Professor Emerita, Stanford University, and Research
Scholar, Department of Religious Studies, Brown University
(Invited Research Scholar)
• Catherine Desbarats, McGill University, CANADA
(Invited Research Scholar, fall 2007)
• David M. Fitzsimons, Independent Scholar
(Invited Research Scholar)
• Jack P. Greene, Professor Emeritus, Johns Hopkins University
(Invited Research Scholar)
• Jerome S. Handler, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
(Research Associate, summer 2007)
• Tony Horwitz
(Visiting Scholar, fall 2007)
• Toby Lester
(Invited Research Scholar)
• Dryden G. Liddle, Open University, UNITED KINGDOM
(Invited Research Scholar, summer 2007)
• Gerald E. Mueller, Professor Emeritus, New Mexico State University
(Research Associate)
• James Muldoon, Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University
(Invited Research Scholar)
Slavery & Justice: First Online Exhibition of the John Carter Brown Library
In conjunction with the recent publication of the Report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice (http://brown.edu/Research/Slavery_Justice/), the John Carter Brown Library has added an electronic version of their recent exhibition on slavery to their website, www.jcbl.org. The public can now see images of selected original documents, such as manuscript journals, cargo invoices, newspaper advertisements, and engravings depicting aspects of the slave trade—on computer screens. The exhibition, entitled Slavery & Justice: Selected Sources from the John Carter Brown Library, is the first online exhibition prepared by the Library.
Slavery began as early as 1638 in New England, when the first African slaves were brought in from the West Indies in exchange for native American Pequot captives. Expanding industries brought increasing demand for African slaves in New England, but Rhode Island gained prominence in organizing transatlantic slaving voyages. The Brown family's mercantile firm kept meticulous records and these records, housed at the John Carter Brown, provide intimate details of New England business practices and give important insight into the impact of slavery on Rhode Island's economy. While some members of the Brown family attempted to garner financial gain from the slave trade in the eighteenth century, other family members became leaders in efforts to abolish slavery in the nineteenth century and then, later in the twentieth century, to ban discriminatory practices in the U.S. military. Slavery left so many legacies in the United States and around the world that it is impossible to enumerate them all. But in a state as small as Rhode Island, the story, portrayed in this exhibition, can be told with greater clarity.
The John Carter Brown Library is a private, non-profit, independently funded and administered institution for advanced research in history and the humanities, founded in 1846 and located at Brown University since 1901. The Library holds one of the world's leading collections of books, maps, and manuscripts relating to the colonial period of the Americas, North and South, from 1492 to ca. 1825. The Library offers fellowships, sponsors lectures and conferences, regularly mounts exhibitions for the public, and publishes catalogues, bibliographies, facsimiles, and other works that interpret its holdings.
 |
Detail from M. Chambon, Traité général du commerce de l’Amérique, Tome II (Amsterdam, 1783). From the collection of the John Carter Brown Library. Shown is a small boat filled with African captives approaching a slave ship while groups of relatives and friends on the shore lament their departure. This two-volume “universal treatise on American trade” deals with many commodities and trading ventures of the 18th century. |
July 2006
The John Carter Brown Library at Brown University Awards Thirty-Three Research Fellowships For 2006–2007
The John Carter Brown Library, an independently funded and administered institution for advanced research in history and the humanities, located at Brown University since 1901, has awarded fellowships to thirty-three scholars from around the world for the 2006–2007 academic year.
All of the fellows will be doing research in the Library’s renowned collection of primary materials relating to the European discovery, exploration, settlement, and development of the New World, the African contribution to the development of this hemisphere, and indigenous responses to the European incursion.
Eight scholars received post-doctoral long-term fellowships (five to ten months), three of these funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), an agency of the Federal government. Other long-term fellowships are underwritten by permanent Library endowments: the J. M. Stuart Fund, the InterAmericas Fund for research relating to the West Indies and the Caribbean basin as a whole, and the R. David Parsons Fund for research relating to European discovery and exploration. Additional support for long-term fellowships has been granted to the Library by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
An additional twenty-five scholars will be in residence during the year for periods ranging from two to four months. These fellows will be receiving support from a number of Library endowed funds, some of which have thematic restrictions. The Jeannette D. Black Memorial Fellowship is for research on the history of cartography; Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellowships are for research in the comparative history of the colonial Americas; the Alexander O. Vietor Memorial Fellowship and the Marie L. and William R. Hartland Fellowship focus on early mari-time history; the Ruth and Lincoln Ekstrom Fellowship specializes in the history of women and the family in the Americas; the William Reese Company Fellowship is for research in bibliography and the history of printing; and the Touro National Heritage Trust Fellowship supports research on some aspect of the Jewish experience in the New World before 1825. Maria Elena Cassiet Fellowships are restricted to scholars who are permanent residents of countries in Spanish America. The Maury A. Bromsen Fellowship is focused on colonial Spanish American history.
Other fellowships are available without topical restrictions, supported by the Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Foundation Fund; the Helen Watson Buckner Memorial Fund; the Norman Fiering Fund; the Paul W. McQuillen Memorial Fund; the Barbara S. Mosbacher Fund; and the Charles H. Watts Memorial Fund. A single fellowship each year is underwritten by annual gifts from the John Carter Brown Library Associates.
Of the thirty-three fellows invited this year, thirteen are coming from foreign countries, and ten are completing work on doctoral dissertations. According to the Director of the Library, Dr. Edward L. Widmer, “It is part of the essential mission of the John Carter Brown Library to offer scholars from distant places modest financial support when their research requires that they travel to Providence to use the Library’s unique resources.”
A list of fellows, their current institutional affiliations, and the titles of their projects follows. The number in parentheses indicates the number of months each will be in residence at the Library.
Patricia Akhimie, Columbia University
"Sporting Life: Early American Promotional Literature and the Ethnology of Leisure"
Helen Watson Buckner Memorial Fellow
(2) Summer 2006Elena Altuna, Universidad Nacional de Salta, ARGENTINA
"Miré Los Muros de la Patroa Mía: Las Ciudades Criollas"
Maria Elena Cassiet Fellow
(4) Summer 2007Srinivas Aravamudan, Duke University
"Fictional Orients: Hybrid Modernity Under Enlightenment Premises, 1682–1789"
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow
(10) Fall 2006Brian Arthur, University of Greenwich, UNITED KINGDOM
"The Royal Navy and Economic Warfare in North America, 1812–1815"
Caird Traveling Fellow/National Maritime Museum
(3) Summer 2006Guillaume Aubert, Williams College
"'The Blood of France': Constructing Race in the French Atlantic World"
Ruth and Lincoln Ekstrom Fellow
(4) Fall 2006R. Jovita Baber, Texas A&M University
"The Construction of Empire: Law, Politics, and Community in Tlaxcala, New Spain, 1521–1640"
Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow
(3) Spring 2007Antonio Barrera, Colgate University
"The Atlantic World and the Scientific Revolution"
Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Research Fellow
(5) Spring 2007Arne Bialuschewski, Universität Kiel, GERMANY
"Beneficial Encounters? Buccaneers and the Indigenous Populations of the Caribbean and Mesoamerica, c. 1630–1700"
Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Research Fellow
(5) Summer 2006Sherwin Bryant, Northwestern University
"Re-Claiming Lives: Struggles for Mastery, Autonomy, and Rights in Colonial Quito, 1690–1810"
Paul W. McQuillen Memorial Fellow
(4) Summer 2007Douglas R. Burgess, Jr., Brown University
"Gentleman of Fortune: Pirates, Governors, and the Crown in the Atlantic Colonies, 1688–1718"
J. M. Stuart Fellow
(6) Spring 2007Elizabeth Colwill, San Diego State University
"The Empire of Ritual: Sex, Savagery, and Slavery in the Haitian Revolution"
Charles H. Watts Memorial Fellow
(2) Summer 2007José de la Puente-Brunke, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, PERU
"Judges and Justice in Seventeenth Century Peru: The Ministers of the Audiencia and Lima's Society"
Maria Elena Cassiet Fellow
(3) Spring 2007Marcela Echeverri, New York University
"Popular Royalists and Revolution in Colombia: Nationalism and Empire, 1780–1840" Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow
(4) Spring 2007Paul Firbas, Princeton University
"Colonial Geographies: The Strait of Magellan, 1579–1622"
R. David Parsons/Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Research Fellow
(5) Fall 2006Nélida García, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, SPAIN
"Naval Policies and Imperial Defense in the Atlantic World: United States, Britain, France, and Spain, 1783–1814"
Marie L. and William R. Hartland Memorial Fellow
(4) Fall 2006Sheryllynne Haggerty, University of Nottingham, UNITED KINGDOM
"Liverpool and the Atlantic World 1760–1815: Culture, Community, and Communications"
Caird Traveling Fellow/National Maritime Museum
(3) Summer 2006Martin Hubley, University of Ottawa, CANADA
"Desertion, Identity, and the Royal Navy in North America, 1745–1815"
Marie L. and William R. Hartland Memorial Fellow
(3) Spring 2007Lyman Johnson, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
"Troubled Origins: The French Conspiracy of 1795 and Argentine Independence"
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow
(5) Spring 2007Bradley Jones, University of Glasgow, UNITED KINGDOM
"The American Revolution and Popular Loyalism in the British Atlantic World"
John Carter Brown Library Associates Fellow
(3) Summer 2007Christina Jones, Howard University
"Revolution and Reaction: Santo Domingo during the Haitian Revolution and Beyond, 1791–1844"
Barbara S. Mosbacher Fellow
(2) Summer 2007Willem Klooster, Clark University
"Revolutions in the Atlantic World: A Comparative History"
InterAmericas/Andrew W. Mellon Post-Doctoral Research Fellow
(9) Fall 2006Pilar Latasa, Universidad de Navarra, SPAIN
"The Making of Marriage in Spanish Colonial Peru: 17th-Century"
Ruth and Lincoln Ekstrom Fellow
(3) Spring 2007Carla Lois, University of Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA
"Printed and Manuscript World Maps: Colors and Techniques in the Art of the Sixteenth-Century European Cartography"
Jeannette D. Black Memorial Fellow
(3) Spring 2007Sucheta Mazumdar, Duke University
"From the Slave Trade to the Opium Rush: American and Chinese Merchants in a New Era of Global Commerce"
Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Foundation Fellow
(2) Summer 2006Gwenn A. Miller, College of the Holy Cross
"Communities of Empire in Early Russian America, 1720–1820"
John R. Bockstoce Fund
(2) Fall 2006Stella Nair, University of Michigan
"Defiant Landscape: Visual Culture and Authority in the High Andes, 1450–1800"
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow
(5) Fall 2006David B. Ryden, University of Houston
"The West India Interest in the Age of Abolition, 1780–1807"
Marie L. and William R. Hartland Memorial Fellow
(2) Summer 2006Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, University of São Paulo, BRAZIL
"Representations of Colonial Brazil: Images of its Nature and Natives as Seen by the Voyagers"
Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow
(2) Spring 2007Jenny Shaw, New York University
"Confrontation, Communication, and Negotiation: The Irish Experience and the Making of an Atlantic World, 1650–1713"
Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow
(3) Summer 2006José Tavim, Instituto de Investigacão Cientifica Tropical, PORTUGAL
"Sephardic Jews of the Seventeenth Century: Lasting Attraction of the Iberian World"
Touro National Heritage Trust Fellow
(3) Spring 2007Benjamin N. Teensma, Leiden University, THE NETHERLANDS
"17th-Century Intelligence Activities of the Dutch West-India Company in and about Brazil"
Alexander O. Vietor Memorial Fellow
(3) Spring 2007Anoush Terjanian, East Carolina University
"'Doux Commerce' and its Discontents: Slavery, Piracy, and Monopoly in Eighteenth-Century France"
Helen Watson Buckner Memorial Fellow
(3) Summer 2006Joanne van der Woude, University of Virginia
"Towards a Transatlantic Aesthetic: Immigration, Translation, and Mourning in the Seventeenth Century"
Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow
(3) Summer 2007
In addition, the following scholars will be in official residence at the Library for varying lengths of time:
Jennifer L. Anderson, New York University
(Invited Research Scholar)Patricia U. Bonomi, Professor Emerita, New York University
(Invited Research Scholar, summer 2006)Amy Turner Bushnell, Independent Scholar
(Invited Research Scholar)Carol L. Delaney, Professor Emerita, Stanford University and Visiting
Professor, Department of Religious Studies, Brown University
(Invited Research Scholar)David M. Fitzsimons, Independent Scholar
(Invited Research Scholar)Jack P. Greene, Professor Emeritus, Johns Hopkins University
(Invited Research Scholar)Jerome S. Handler, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
(Research Associate, summer 2006)Dryden G. Liddle, Open University, UNITED KINGDOM
(Invited Research Scholar, summer 2006)Frederick Luciani, Colgate University
(Invited Research Scholar, spring 2007)James Muldoon, Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University
(Invited Research Scholar)
July 2006
Library Publishes New Book Based on Manuscript of John Russell Bartlett
The Library is pleased to announce publication of the Autobiography of John Russell Bartlett (1805–1886), edited by Professor Jerry E. Mueller. John Russell Bartlett was a major American bibliographer and an artist of the Southwest who had a remarkably multi-faceted career as bookseller, Chief of the United State Boundary Commission that established the border with Mexico, Secretary of State of Rhode Island, and John Carter Brown’s personal librarian. His memoir concerning his education, his professional undertakings, and his many achievements in literary and bibliographic circles has been in the JCB collection since the late nineteenth century. The memoir itself is supplemented by thirty illustrations, many of them sketches or paintings by Bartlett. Prof. Mueller has annotated and amplified Bartlett’s original text, illuminating the context in which Bartlett co-founded the Providence Athenaeum and associated with luminaries like Edgar Allan Poe and Albert Gallatin.
The book is priced at $50.00 plus postage and packaging and is publication #750 listed under Miscellaneous in Publications of the John Carter Brown Library.
June 2006
New Exhibition Features Role of France in the American Revolution
“France and the American Revolution” was designed to complement a symposium organized by the John Carter Brown Library in celebration of the French contribution to the American Victory at Yorktown in 1781. Curated by Susan Danforth, the exhibition presents materials from the JCB collection that illuminate events that led up to the Revolution, French commanders who played significant roles in the conflict, and the concluding march from Rhode Island to Yorktown that resulted in defeat of the British.
The Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834) was among a group of young, well-connected Frenchmen of the military class who sought to participate in the cause of “liberty.” The nineteen-year-old Frenchman asked to serve as an unpaid volunteer on George Washington's staff, and Congress approved his commission in July, 1777. For Lafayette, Washington was a mentor and model whom he strove to imitate throughout the course of his public life.
Maritime assistance to the American cause came under the leadership of Admirals d’Estaing (1729–1794) and de Grasse (1722–1788). Both were important during the Yorktown battle that took place in October 1781 for their effectiveness in preventing either reinforcement of General Cornwallis, who was besieged, or evacuation of Cornwallis and his troops.
The surrender of Yorktown on October 19th was decisive for the American cause, and the 225th anniversary of this event is being marked by a multi-state celebration of the Comte de Rochambeau’s march from Rhode Island and through the colonies along the east coast to join with Washington’s forces and coordinate the assault on Cornwallis in Virginia. King Louis XIV had appointed the Comte de Rochambeau (1727–1807) in 1789 to lead an expeditionary force to serve under George Washington.
Following the JCB’s symposium, which took place on the Brown University campus on June 17th and featured three scholarly papers on the role of the French in the Revolution, re-enactors in French and colonial costume led a procession from College Hill in Providence to the Rhode Island State House to participate in ceremonies sponsored by the Rhode Island Rochambeau Commission.
The JCB’s exhibition will be on view until October 20, 2006. Hours: Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Saturdays, 9:00 a.m. to noon.
February 2006
Library Publishes New Book Based on Diaries of John Carter Brown
In the fall of 2005, the Library published The Young John Carter Brown in Europe: Travel Diaries, 1823-1824. The diaries were edited by Professor Donald G. Rohr and the volume included an Epilogue by the late J. Carter Brown.
The book is a meticulously prepared edition of a travel journal kept by John Carter Brown (1797-1874) when he was in Europe for eighteen months as a young man. On this grand tour, Brown, who twenty years later founded the John Carter Brown Library, visited England, Scotland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy. The book provides a rare glimpse of an educated young American’s impressions of the manners and the artistic and architectural wonders of the Old World in the early nineteenth century. Professor Rohr’s fifty-page Introduction to the work and his detailed annotation enhances understanding of the text without pedantry.
The Young John Carter Brown in Europe: Travel Diaries, 1823-1824 is publication #748 listed under Miscellaneous in Publications of the John Carter Brown Library.
January 2006
Edward L. Widmer Named Director of the John Carter Brown Library
The Board of Governors of the John Carter Brown Library announced last week the appointment of Edward L. Widmer as the new Director and Librarian of the John Carter Brown Library, effective on July 1, 2006.
Since 2001 Dr. Widmer has served as the inaugural director of the C. V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience and Associate Professor of History at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. In that capacity, he helped to create visiting fellowships, international exchanges, conferences, lectures, and other activities that made the Starr Center an important locus for the study of American history and the dissemination of research and scholarship.
Prior to his appointment at Washington College, Dr. Widmer served in the Clinton White House as Senior Advisor to the President for Special Projects, as Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, and as Director for Speechwriting at the National Security Council. From 1993 to 1997 Dr. Widmer held an appointment as Lecturer on History and Literature at Harvard University. He holds an A.B. in the History and Literature of France and America, an A.M. in History, and a Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization from Harvard.
Professor Widmer has published widely on topics in American history and politics. His first book, Young America: The Flowering of Democracy in New York City (1999), was the recipient of the 2001 Washington Irving Literary Medal. He is the co-author (with Alan Brinkley) of Campaigns: A Century of Presidential Races (2001) and the author of Martin Van Buren (2005). He is a contributing editor to The American Scholar and a frequent contributor to The New York Times and other publications.
Dr. Widmer will succeed the sixth director of the Library, Norman Fiering, who has served as Director and Librarian since 1983 with great distinction. Under his leadership, the Library has significantly improved and expanded the celebrated collection, increased access of researchers to its primary historical resources, mounted widely heralded public exhibitions, and published scores of resources on the collection.
The John Carter Brown Library is an independently funded and administered institution for advanced research in history and the humanities, founded in 1846 and located at Brown University since 1901. The Library holds one of the world’s leading collections of books, maps, and manuscripts relating to the colonial period of the Americas, North and South, from 1492 to ca. 1825. The Library offers fellowships, sponsors lectures and conferences, regularly mounts exhibitions for the public, and publishes catalogues, bibliographies, facsimiles, and other works that interpret the Library's holdings.
January 2006
Maury A. Bromsen Bequeaths $4 Million to the John Carter Brown Library
The distinguished Boston collector and antiquarian bookdealer, Maury A. Bromsen, who died on October 11, 2005, has bequeathed $4 million to the John Carter Brown Library for the support of programs in Latin American studies.
The gift will make possible the creation at the Library of the new position of Curator of Latin American Books and will also endow an annual Maury A. Bromsen lecture; a research fellowship; an annual concert to be named after Mr. Bromsen’s sister, Freda Bromsen Bolster; and acquisitions, cataloguing, and conservation.
In addition to the gift of endowment funds, Mr. Bromsen has also left to the John Carter Brown Library thousands of valuable books and manuscripts. Some of this legacy will be sold at auction because it falls outside of the Library’s defined fields for acquisitions. Other works will be retained by the Library and added to its holdings.
According to the Library Director, Norman Fiering, the Bromsen bequest is the largest single donation made to the John Carter Brown Library since 1901.
Mr. Bromsen’s particular passion as a collector was material relating to colonial Spanish America, from the time of Columbus to that of the nineteenth-century “Liberator,” Simón Bolívar, who led the independence movement in northern South America. The collecting interests of Mr. Bromsen and that of the John Carter Brown Library closely overlapped, and in 2000 Mr. Bromsen donated his Simón Bolívar collection to the Library. The collection is housed in the Maury A. Bromsen-Simón Bolívar Room of the Library.
Mr. Bromsen’s knowledge of early printing in Spanish America, especially in Peru, Chile, Venezuela, and Cuba, was encyclopedic. He knew intimately the work of the great bibliographers of early Spanish American printing, such as the Chilean José Toribio Medina, in recognition of whose birth Mr. Bromsen organized a centennial celebration in Washington, D. C., in 1952, sponsored by the Library of Congress and the Pan-American Union. Mr. Bromsen later edited a collection of essays, José Toribio Medina, Humanist of the Americas: An Appraisal (1960), derived from the conference.
Mr. Bromsen’s achievements as a bibliographical scholar, historian, and collector brought him numerous honors. In 1952 the government of Chile made him a Knight Commander in the Orden al Mérito “Bernardo Higgins,” and in 1985 the Republic of Venezuela inducted Mr. Bromsen into the Orden Francisco de Miranda, First Class. In 1987, Northeastern University in Boston awarded Mr. Bromsen an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, and in 2003 he was awarded Brown University’s President’s Medal.
The John Carter Brown Library is an independently funded and administered institution for advanced research in history and the humanities, founded in 1846 and located at Brown University since 1901. The Library holds one of the world’s leading collections of books, maps, and manuscripts relating to the colonial period of the Americas, North and South, from 1492 to ca. 1825. The Library offers fellowships, sponsors lectures and conferences, regularly mounts exhibitions for the public, and publishes catalogues, bibliographies, facsimiles, and other works that interpret the Library’s holdings. For further information, visit www.JCBL.org.
October 2005
The John Carter Brown Library Publishes New Work on Maritime History
A completely revised and expanded edition of Maritime History: A Hand-List of the Collection in the John Carter Brown Library, 1474 to ca. 1860 was published by the Library on October 1.
This guide to the John Carter Brown Library's extensive holdings of maritime material relating to all aspects of European overseas expansion was first compiled in 1979. In 1985 a Supplement was issued incorporating acquisitions from 1979 to 1984. This 2005 edition includes more than a hundred additional acquisitions and has been entirely reformatted.
Compiled initially by C. Danial Elliott, the later revisions were made by Everett C. Wilkie, Jr., and then by Richard R. Ring, the current reference and acquisitions librarian on the JCB staff. Over 1,300 items, most published before 1800, are listed in the new edition.
The Hand-List is topically organized into twelve categories, such as "Navigation and Seamanship," "Marine Architecture, Ship Construction, and Rigging," and "Health at Sea." Entries are in chronological order within those categories, and the book is completely indexed by both author and title.In an era when travel, commerce, and warfare were all heavily dependent upon prowess at sea, maritime publishing was a major enterprise. Certain titles that provided valuable information on navigation, sailing directions, and seamanship were reprinted again and again to meet the extraordinary demand for such works. Other genres are also frequently seen, such as accounts of shipwrecks and of notorious pirates. It was an era, too, when the law of the sea was first being formulated.
Maritime History: A Hand-List of the Collection in the John Carter Brown Library, 1474 to 1860 is 296 pages, 7-1/2 x 11", and is available in hard cover only, for $30.00. This revised edition completely supersedes earlier versions of the work. The book is distrib-uted by Oak Knoll Books (see ordering address below). Members of the John Carter Brown Library Associates, however, may order individual copies directly from the Library at a 25 percent discount.
Also available from the Library on related subjects are:
"The Boundless Deep . . .": The European Conquest of the Oceans, 1450 to 1840 (Providence, 2003) by John Hattendorf, the catalogue of the Library's exhibition at the Newport Art Museum in 2003. This work of 228 pages with many illustrations is available in both cloth ($50.00) and paper ($35.00).
and
Sir Francis Drake as Seen by His Contemporaries, an essay by David B. Quinn, with a Bibliographical Supplement by Burton Van Name Edwards (Providence, 1996). (112 pp. Paper only. $18.00). The Bibliographical Supplement in this volume lists more than 100 sources in the Library relating to Drake, most of them printed before 1800.
To order copies of the above titles write to Oak Knoll Books, 310 Delaware Street, New Castle, DE 19720, or turn to www.oakknoll.com to order online; or write to John Carter Brown Library, Box 1894, Providence, Rhode Island 02912, or visit www.JCBL.org.
May 2005
John Carter Brown Library Launches the Archive of Early American Images
On May 13, 2005, the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, Rhode Island, opened to the general public its Archive of Early American Images. The Archive is an online database made up entirely of images of North and South America found in obscure books and maps printed before 1825. The Archive is accessible through the Library’s website, www.JCBL.org.
The vast majority of the illustrations in the Archive have never before been circulated in any form since the original printing of the book, centuries ago, in which the image is found. All of the images come from works in the collection of the John Carter Brown Library, which has unparalleled holdings in this field. The books themselves are in more than a dozen languages, but predominantly in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, English, German, Italian, and Latin.
The database is designed to assist scholars in many fields - history, anthropology, and art history, to name only a few - in their quest for contemporary images to illustrate their research findings. The Archive makes possible, as well, the study of historical images in their own right and in proper context.
Still in the process of compilation, the database will ultimately hold about 6,000 images, covering the entire territory from Hudson’s Bay to Tierra del Fuego. At present there are approximately 2,500 images in the database.
The images are organized into categories such as Indigenous Peoples; Flora and Fauna; Geography, Maps, City Views and Plans; Portraits; and Artifacts, Industry, and Human Activities. Each image in the Archive is accompanied by extensive information about the work, including a descriptive text about the image itself and the full bibliographical record concerning the book in which the image is located. The images are accessible by means of more than thirty different fields, such as subject, title, date, creator, and geographical location.
The preparation of the Archive of Early American Images is supported by generous grants from the Ahmanson Foundation and the Getty Foundation. On display at the John Carter Brown Library through September 15, 2005, occasioned by the launching of the database, is an exhibition entitled “Imagining America/Imaging America: Celebrating the JCB’s Archive of Early American Images.” The exhibition showcases an eclectic sampling of the many kinds of images to be found on the web site: the depiction of Columbus’s landfall in the New World; the discovery of an animal unknown in Europe, the armadillo; and different illustrations of Mexico City, the largest city in the Americas during the colonial period. Also included are examples of first instances of genres of images printed in the New World, images whose purpose was to propagandize, and images that have inspired scholarship. The exhibition is open to the public Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and Saturday, 9:00 a.m. until 12:00 noon.
The John Carter Brown Library is an independently funded and administered institution for advanced research in history and the humanities, founded in 1846 and located at Brown University since 1901. The Library’s collection is focused entirely on the history of North and South America during the colonial period, or roughly from 1493 to 1825. Its more than 45,000 volumes include, for example, European accounts of voyages by explorers, literature on the growth of the colonies, observations of Native Americans, religious writings, and descriptions of colonial wars. The Library also has an extensive collection of maps dating from 1477 to the mid-nineteenth century.
Return to the JCB in the News page.
