News

The Musée du Nouveau Monde (New World Museum) in La Rochelle may seem an unlikely place to learn how a Brazilian-born, Portuguese-trained naturalist-turned-journalist conducted botanical espionage in the nascent United States. But in November 2018, Director and Librarian Neil Safier (shown beside a dramatic statue...

At its October 2018 meeting, the JCB Board of Governors honored one of its longstanding members with a recognition befitting his many years of service on the Board. The room formerly known as the “Photo studio" was renamed the Clinton I. Smullyan, Jr. Suite for...

The Aurora Australis, printed at the sign of 'The Penguins' Joyce and Wild during April through July 1908, holds the distinction of being the first book printed in the Polar regions. It was produced at the winter quarters of Ernest Shackleton’s British Antarctic Expedition...

In the 1570s, the Spanish crown attempted to solve the problem of longitude calculation by collecting empirical astronomical observations from across their territories. This enormous project, started by royal cosmographer Juan López de Velasco, was conducted largely through questionnaires whose results were never made public...

JCB Fellow Asiel Sepúlveda, a PhD Candidate in Art History at Southern Methodist University studying the visual productions that emerged from the British occupation of Havana in 1762, completed his two-month Jeannette D. Black Memorial Fellowship in September and October 2018. While in residence, Asiel...

Congratulations to former JCB fellow Christopher M. Parsons on the publication of A Not-So-New World: Empire and Environment in French Colonial North America, available this month from the University of Pennsylvania Press. Parsons, Assistant Professor of History at Northeastern University, illustrates how the French...