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Unearthing the Past Through Maps: How Maps Reveal (and Conceal) History

with Susan Schulten, University of Denver

Explore how maps have both shaped and distorted American history at Mapping our Past. During this event, the Jacksonville Public Library celebrates the Lewis Ansbacher Map Collection at Main with 240+ maps and two expert speakers.

Mapping our Past is perfect for map enthusiasts, history buffs, lifelong learners, and students curious about how maps shape our understanding of the past.

Over five hundred years, America has been defined through maps. Whether handmaidens of diplomacy, tools of statecraft, instruments of social reform, or tools of persuasion, these sources record efforts to make sense of the world. They invest information with meaning by translating it into visual form, and in the process reflect decisions about how the world ought to be seen. Join us as Susan Schulten explores some of the maps that have shaped the history of North America, particularly the Southeast and Florida. From the age of exploration down to our own day, these sources remind us that the past is not just a chronological story, but also a spatial one.

Susan Schulten is Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Denver, where she has taught since 1996. This past year She served as the Colorado State Historian, in a year marking 150 years of Colorado Statehood and 250 years of American independence. Schulten is the author of several books that use old maps to tell new stories about American history, including A History of America in 100 Maps (2018), Mapping the Nation: History and Cartography in Nineteenth-Century America (2012), and The Geographical Imagination in America, 1880-1950 (2012), all published with the University of Chicago Press. Her most recent book is Emma Willard: Maps of History (2022). She has also co-authored a two-volume history of America with Elliott Gorn entitled Constructing the American Past: A Sourcebook of a People’s History (9th edition, 2024) with Oxford University Press. Her work has been funded by the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Mellon Foundation. She is now writing a book about one of the most influential mapmakers of the twentieth century, Richard Edes Harrison. This year Professor Schulten’s courses include Understanding Lincoln, the Civil War and Reconstruction, War and the Presidency, American Thought and Culture, and Nineteenth-Century America.

Mapping Our Past is made possible through the generosity of the Lewis and Sybil Ansbacher Family Foundation and the Jordan and Shirley Ansbacher Family Foundation through the Library Foundation of Jacksonville. 

***Please note that you must register on each event page to attend both January 16 programs. First, use the blue button at the top to register for this session. Then visit the event page and fill out the form to sign up for The Florida Territory: From Outpost to Statehood from 10:00-11:00 separately. You should receive two separate confirmation emails.

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