ARTH 349 Studies in the History of Print

• Thursdays, 2:45om-5:15pm
• EV-1-605
• Instructor: Professor Victoria Addona

Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in 1440 heralded what many have referred to as the first era of mass communication. By the time European navigators began to explore and colonise the Americas, printing presses already had been established in most major European cities. Through text and image, print facilitated the widespread transmission of information and opinions of, and experiences and ideas about, the so-called New World to Europeans, many of whom would never travel abroad. This course will examine the intersecting and entangled early modern histories of print media and European global exploration. We will assess how print enabled both the circulation of knowledge about the world’s built and natural environments, resources, and human cultures to European audiences, as well as their development of longstanding assumptions, biases, racial and cultural stereotypes, and colonial practices. While most of the course will focus on the ways print fostered conceptions of an expanding global world in the European imaginary, we will also consider how indigenous communities in the Americas adapted print technologies, as well as the dissemination and reception of European prints across the Mediterranean, Asia, and the Americas. Main themes will include natural history, cartography, reproduction technology, text and image relations, colonialism, race, and the global.