Leif Isaksen (Lancaster University): "There and Back Again: Texts, Networks and the Origins of Cartography"
Date and Time
Location
We're delighted to welcome Dr. Leif Isaksen to DH Office Hours at Northeastern University. Please join us for what promises to be a fascinating exploration of maps, texts, and networks in the ancient world:
There and Back Again: Texts, Networks and the Origins of Cartography
Dr Leif Isaksen, Lancaster University
http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/history/about-us/people/leif-isaksen
Wednesday 19th April 2017, 12:30-1:30 pm
Digital Scholarship Commons, Snell Library 211
Northeastern University
This seminar discusses the relationship between maps, texts and networks in Antiquity - both in the role they played in establishing (or failing to establish) cartographic norms, and the opportunities they avail for understanding a genre which exists almost entirely in fragments. It will look at two case studies: the Geographike Hyphegesis (ŒManual for World-drawing¹) of Claudius Ptolemy, and the Peutinger Map a damaged Medieval copy of a Roman world map. The first will illustrate the how the sequential nature of text operated both as an impediment and a partial solution to the challenge of structuring visual representations the oikumene (inhabited world). The second will show how linear descriptions of itinerary networks can potentially offer insight into how they may have been expressed in two, or even three, dimensions.
Dr. Isaksen is a Senior Lecturer in History (Digital Humanities) at Lancaster University and is the Director of the Pelagios Commons (http://commons.pelagios.org/). His research focuses on the development of geographic thought and representation in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and the emerging role of the Web as a transformational medium for communicating and connecting complex information.
If you're coming from outside Northeastern, please RSVP at http://bit.ly/2m4HdYg so we can put you on the access list.
Julia Flanders
Director, Digital Scholarship Group
Northeastern University