SCHEDULE
10:00 - 10:30am - Doors open @ The David Rumsey Map Center at Stanford University
10:30 - 10:45am - Opening Remarks, Ron Gibbs, President CMS & Tom Paper, VP CMS
10:45 - 11:30am - Hampton Sides, In the Kingdom of Ice
11:30 - 12:00pm - Rachel Bolten, Paradise in Panorama
12:00 - 1:30pm - Lunch (in-person attendees may order and pickup lunches at Copa Cafe)
1:30 - 2:00pm - Ron Gibbs, 1777: Decisive Year in the American Revolution
2:00 - 2:30pm - An Interview with David Rumsey
2:30 - 2:45pm - Break
2:45 - 3:15pm - Leo Dillon, Cartography and Foreign Policy
3:15 - 3:45pm - Grant Parker, Reimagining Slavery at the Cape of Good Hope
3:45 - 4:00pm - Closing Remarks, Ron Gibbs & Tom Paper
4:00 - 4:30pm - CMS Business Meeting
DETAILED BIOS & SUMMARIES OF PRESENTATIONS
Hampton Sides, In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette
* Historian Hampton Sides will speak about the voyage of the USS Jeannette, one of the most harrowing adventures of all time and the subject of his New York Times bestselling book, In the Kingdom of Ice. All but forgotten today, the Jeannette expedition was America's first official attempt on the North Pole (1879-1882), undertaken by the U.S. Navy. This tale of a Gilded Age expedition gone very, very wrong, is many things: An examination of the human will to survive, a portrait of a young nation pushing its way onto the world stage, an evocation of the power and strangeness of the natural world, and a compelling look at the pseudo-scientific theories spread by supposed "experts" like the infamous German cartographer August Petermann that sent many explorers to their early deaths. Above all, this little-known expedition from the Heroic Age of Exploration is a spellbinding and suspenseful journey-not only into the Arctic but into the very nature of man.
* Hampton Sides is an historian, an editor-at-large at Outside Magazine and a contributor to numerous newspapers and magazines. He has published numerous books and is now at work on a book about the third and final voyage of Captain James Cook. http://www.hamptonsides.com<http://www.hamptonsides.com/>
Rachel Bolten, Paradise in Panorama
* This talk traces the lives and afterlives of the panorama in California, a form at its peak in the mid-1800s, but which survives well into the twentieth century. I begin by looking closely at the 1878 Muybridge Panorama of San Francisco; after the 1906 earthquake and fire in that city photograph and lithograph panoramas were again made in large numbers, both as geologic record and morbid souvenirs of the ruin. I find echoes of the panorama during the Depression, another moment of socioeconomic and environmental collapse: in the novels The Day of the Locust, Ask the Dust, and Mildred Pierce, in the disaster musical San Francisco, and in the culture of the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island.
* Rachel Heise Bolten is a lecturer in the Program in American Studies at Stanford University. https://profiles.stanford.edu/rachel-bolten
Ronald S. Gibbs, 1777: Decisive Year in the American Revolution
* At our Spring 2018 Meeting , Ron Gibbs presented " On the Brink of Disaster : George Washington and The American Revolution, 1775-1776." In this new lecture, CMS President Gibbs will jump back with us to the momentous story of the Campaign of 1777 and show why, with historic maps and images, it proved to be the Decisive Year of the American Revolution."
* Ronald S. Gibbs, MD, President of the California Map Society, has lectured and written frequently on American history and cartography. He is Clinical Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Knowles Distinguished Scholar at Stanford University. https://ronaldsgibbs.com<https://ronaldsgibbs.com/>
An Interview with David Rumsey
* David Rumsey will be interviewed by Tom Paper, Vice President of the California Map Society. Tom will talk with David about his early years and college, his first work experiences involving art and technology, his transition to real estate development and his current activities with the David Rumsey Center, Luna Imaging and Cartography Associates.
* David Rumsey is President of Cartography Associates, a digital publishing company based in San Francisco, and is Chairman of Luna Imaging, a provider of enterprise software for online image collections. https://www.davidrumsey.com/about/david-rumsey
Leo Dillon, Cartography and Foreign Policy
* Maps are an important tool for crafting foreign policy, and in return foreign policy is an important influence on elements of maps. The presenter will draw from his 34 years of experience as a cartographer and geographer at the U.S. State Department to describe the intersection of map making and foreign policy, and to give examples on how boundaries, depictions of territorial sovereignty, and geographic names shape the maps we use in ways we often take for granted.
* Leo Dillon is recently retired, formerly with the Office of the Geographer and Global Issues, U.S. Department of State. State Magazine<https://statemag.state.gov/2019/02/office-of-the-geographer-and-global-issues/>. Wired Magazine<https://www.wired.com/2014/01/state-department-maps/>.
Grant Parker, Reimagining Slavery at the Cape of Good Hope
* This lecture will canvas historical maps as sources of insight into lives, both enslaved and slave-holding, at the Cape in the early colonial period. Grant will consider how selected maps tacitly embed narratives on both a large and a small scale and how they reflect both continuity and change. The lecture will draw on Stanford University's map collections.
* Grant Parker is an Associate Professor of the Department of Classics at Stanford University and a Faculty Affiliate of the Center for African Studies. https://profiles.stanford.edu/grant-parker