Thurs., November 13^th at 6:00 PM in 523 Butler Library

Seth Kimmel, Assistant Professor, Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, Columbia University

Ferdinand Columbus (Christopher’s second son) was an avid bibliophile who amassed one of the largest libraries of the sixteenth century. The series of catalogues that he devised to navigate his collection have long captivated historians of the book. Yet Ferdinand was an accomplished cartographer as well as a librarian. Along with a team of experts based in his hometown of Seville, Ferdinand helped to compile peninsular topographical data and to keep the Crown’s world map up-to-date, even as he worked tirelessly to build his book and print collection. Drawing on Ferdinand’s catalogues as well as a series of testaments composed around the time of his death, this presentation examines the intertwined relationship between bibliography and cartography in the early modern period.

Seth Kimmel is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures at Columbia University. His research focuses on Early Modern Iberia, theories of secularism and religion, the history of reading, and cultural exchange and conflict among Iberian Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Kimmel’s current book project is an intellectual history of New Christian assimilation. The book argues that canon law, Oriental Studies, and history writing were all transformed by hotly contested debates over eradicating Islam and Judaism from the Iberian Peninsula and converting non-Christians elsewhere in the Spanish empire.

The Book History Colloquium at Columbia University, open to any discipline, aims to provide a broad outlet for the scholarly discussion of book history, print culture, the book arts, and bibliographical research, and (ideally) the promotion of research and publication in these fields. Our presenters include Columbia faculty members and advanced graduate students, and scholars of national prominence from a range of institutions.

Questions? Email Karla Nielsen.

All sessions take place 6:00 PM in 523 Butler Library, Columbia Morningside Campus, unless otherwise noted.