Making and Knowing: Early Modern Geometries
Northwestern University/The Newberry Library
A History of the Book Symposium
Thursday and Friday, October 29 and 30

This two-part workshop consists of paired lectures at Northwestern University on Thursday, 29 October, followed by a day-long History of the Book seminar at the Newberry Library in Chicago on Friday, 30 October. The two parts of Making and Knowing: Early Modern Geometries are fully complementary, but differently structured: the Thursday lectures will set the general theme for the particular considerations on and hands-on study of works in the collection of the Newberry during the annual History of the Book Seminar.

Thursday, October 29
5 to 7 pm
Northwestern University

Rebecca Zorach, Northwestern University
“Of Spiders and Snowflakes: Natural and Artificial Geometries in Early Modern Europe”
J. B. Shank, University of Minnesota
"Mathematics in the Mind, on Paper, and at the Lathe. Ivory Turning as Geometry”

Harris Hall 108
Northwestern University
Evanston, IL
Free and open to the public

Friday, October 30
9 am to 3:30 pm
The Newberry Library
Chicago, IL

9 am Coffee and continental breakfast

9:30 - 10:40 Session 1

“Reading and Making the Geometry of Vision: From Alberti to Descartes”
Raz Chen Morris, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

“Reading Euclid Backwards”
William West, Northwestern University

“Graphic Making, Actuarial Knowing: Frederic Edwin Church’s South American Drawings”

10:40 - 10:50 Break

10:50 - 12 Session 2

“Huge Tracts of Land: Books and Renaissance Surveying Culture”
Suzanne Karr Schmidt, Art Institute of Chicago

“Graphic Making, Actuarial Knowing: Frederic Edwin Church’s South American Drawings”
Matthew Hunter, McGill University

12 - 1 Catered lunch for all registered participants

1 - 2:10 Session 3

“Designing the Horse: Geometrical Proportions and Breeders in Early Modern Europe”
Dániel Margócsy, Hunter College

“Paleography as Topography: Architects and Their Letters”
Carolyn Yerkes, Princeton University

2:30 - 3:30 Special session with rare books in the reading room

This program is free and open to the public, but space is limited and registration in advance is required. Catered lunch on Friday will be provided to all registered participants. Please register online using the link above by 10 am Friday, October 23.

Faculty and graduate students at member institutions of the Center for Renaissance Studies consortium may be eligible to apply for travel funding to attend this program: http://www.newberry.org/newberry-renaissance-consortium-grants

Co-organized by JB Shank (History, Center for Early Modern History, University of Minnesota); Claudia Swan (Art History, Northwestern University); Rebecca Zorach (Art History, Northwestern University)