Expanding Earth: Travel, Encounter, and Exchange, is on exhibit through May 19 in the Goldstein Family Gallery, sixth floor, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library.

Globalization is no recent phenomenon. People, ideas and objects have always been on the move, encountering and changing one another as a result. This exhibit presents some of the textual and material residues of these encounters and travels, characteristic of past as well as present human activity and curiosity. Focusing on the years 1400 to 1800, the exhibit examines and looks beyond familiar Eurocentric ideas of exploration, conquest and “discovery.” Using manuscripts, printed books, drawings, maps and artifacts, Expanding Earth highlights the movements of peoples, ideas and goods across the world in their own words and in material objects. 

2017 Jay. I Kislak Program: March 2-4: 
To the Ends of the Earth

Keynote and Exhibition Reception Thursday, March 2, 5:30 p.m., Class of 1978 Orrery Pavilion, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library, sixth floor.

Conference Friday, March 3-Saturday, March 4, 8:30 a.m.-6 p.m.; Class of 1978 Orrery Pavilion, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library, sixth floor.

Celebrating the themes of their newest exhibition, Expanding Earth, this conference will explore the transmission and translation of material and cultural practices, cartography, exploration, migration (forced and voluntary) and the changing geographies of liminal spaces. A group of international scholars from several disciplines will examine topics including textual production from early modern Italy to 20th-century Africa, as well as the racialization of space from Victorian England to 19th-century California. The keynote address will be given by Michael A. Gomez, New York University, a leading scholar of Africa and the African Diaspora.

For the schedule and additional information see www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/ends_of_the_earth.html

Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts.

Related: Poetry of Painting and Stillness: Burrison Gallery