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Teaching

Short Teaching Module: European Maps of the Early Modern World

I use images of three historical maps for topics on colonial exploration and for interpreting historical evidence in undergraduate courses on history and historical methodology. I have several aims in using the maps.

Source

From John Bartholomew, Literary and historical atlas of America

This unusual map appeared in a 1911 atlas of America by John George Bartholomew, a prestigious Scottish cartographer and geographer. In this map Bartholomew dramatized the provincialism of European cartography three centuries earlier.

Source

Cantino planisphere

The famous Cantino planisphere was made in 1502 by an anonymous Portuguese official at the request of Alberto Cantino, an Italian agent in Lisbon of Ercole d’Este, Duke of Ferrara.

Source

World map by Henricus Martellus

Henricus Martellus was a German geographer and cartographer who worked in the Italian city of Florence from 1480 to 1496. His book of 1490, Insularium Illustratum ("Illustrated Book of Islands"), in which this map appeared, was widely circulated for two reasons.

Image of a sixteenth-century Ottoman carpet showing a portion of the carpet's main design field that contains a triple arch design with slender double columns and a hanging lamp in the central archway
Source

Islamic Carpet made in Safavid Iran

This carpet called the Qazvin Carpet (also known as the "Salting Carpet") was made in late-sixteenth century Safavid Iran likely in a royal atelier.

Close-up image of an early modern Islami Carpet
Methods

Primer: Transcultural History

Broadly, transcultural histories include those historical contexts and processes brought about by circulation of people, objects, and knowledge through travel, trade, migration, or globalization.

Image of a sixteenth-century Ottoman carpet showing a portion of the carpet's main design field that contains a triple arch design with slender double columns and a hanging lamp in the central archway
Teaching

Short Teaching Module: Early Modern Islamic Carpets as Transcultural Objects

Islamic carpets were ubiquitous in the early modern period (1500-1800) in Europe as much as it was in the Islamic world. They were important objects of decor within homes, imperial palaces, and religious buildings.

Close-up image of an early modern Islami Carpet
Source

Islamic Carpets

These three carpets made in the period between the 16th and 18th centuries show two distinct types of carpets produced in the Islamic World for particular culture-specific uses.

Review

Coins

Well worth its weight in gold—or silver seeing as most of the coins in the collection were made out of it—Coins is perhaps the pre-eminent example of digitisation and visualisation done right. It synthesises academic rigour, curatorial thoroughness, and a spirit of playfulness to bring cold, hard
Spread of humanity map thumbnail
Review

World History for Us All

Its units and lesson plans utilize a range of primary sources, which revolve around three themes are: Humans and the Environment, Humans and Other Humans, Humans and Ideas.