Lauren Beck
Biography
Dr. Lauren Beck specializes in the visual culture of the early-modern Atlantic world, with interests in text-and-image relations, historical cartography, and marginalized voices. She holds the Canada Research Chair in Intercultural Encounter and is Professor of Visual & Material Culture Studies at Mount Allison University and editor of The Cultural History of Exploration. Her recent publications include Visualizing the Text: From Manuscript Culture to Caricature (co-edited with C. Ionescu, University of Delaware Press, 2017); Canada before Confederation: Maps from the Exhibition (co-authored with C. Van Duzer, Vernon Press, 2017); and Transforming the Enemy in Spanish Culture: The Conquest through the Lens of Visual and Textual Multiplicity (Cambria Press, 2013). Her articles have appeared in several journals, including most recently Renaissance Quarterly and Journal of Women's History . She currently holds several external grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canada History Fund, and the Canada Foundation for Innovation.
Publications
1. Select peer-reviewed books and special journal issues:
Abiayalan Pluriverses: Bridging Indigenous Studies and Hispanic Studies, 2024, with G. Chacón and J. Sánchez. Amherst College Press.
Mitji: Let’s Eat! Mi’kmaq Recipes from Sikniktuk, 2024, with M. Augustine. Nimbus Press.
Canada's Place Names and How to Change Them. Concordia University Press, 2022.
The Cultural History of Exploration [6 vols.]. Series editor. Bloomsbury Press, forthcoming.
Illustrating the Cid. Queens-McGill University Press, 2019.
Firsting in the Early Modern Transatlantic World, Routledge, 2019.
The Golden Anniversary Issue [Special issue], Terrae Incognitae 50.3 (2018).
Visualizing the Text: From Manuscript Culture to Caricature . Co-edited with C. Ionescu. University of Delaware Press, 2017.
Canada before Confederation: Maps from the Exhibition . Co-authored with C. Van Duzer. Vernon Press, 2017.
Women in the History of Cartography, Discovery, and Exploration [Special issue] , Terrae Incognitae 48.1 (2016), 1-97.
Small Communities [Special issue] , co-edited with Christina Ionescu, Journal of New Brunswick Studies 6.1 (2015), 1-158.
Mapping North America: Early Modern Narratives of Discovery and Exploration in the Davidson Collection. Catalogue compiled with Christina Ionescu. Mount Allison University, 2015.
Transforming the Enemy in Spanish Culture: The Conquest through the Lens of Visual and Textual Multiplicity . Cambria Press, 2013.
2. Recent book chapters:
"Unsettling Spanish Atlantic History: Toward a Scholarship Invested in Visual and Material Culture," in Firsting in the Early-Modern Transatlantic World , ed. Lauren Beck. Routledge, 2019.
"Firsting: The Architecture of Decolonizing Scholarship on the Early-Modern Transatlantic World," in Firsting in the Early-Modern Transatlantic World , ed. Lauren Beck. Routledge, 2019.
"El Paso Noroeste según las fuentes indígenas utilizadas en mapas ingleses y franceses antes del año 1800," [The Northwest Passage according to Indigenous Sources Used on English and French Maps before 1800] in Enigmas de las Américas , vol. 2: Un paso interoceánico , ed. Sabrina Guerra Moscoso. Universidad San Francisco de Quito, 2019.
"Annotation and Books in Early Modern Spanish Painting," in Visualizing the Text: From Manuscript Culture to Caricature , eds. Lauren Beck and Christina Ionescu. University of Delaware Press, 2017, 71-93.
"Eighteenth-century Spanish American Terra Incognita : Mapping the Things of Empire," in Eighteenth -Century Thing Theory in a Global Context: From Consumerism to Celebrity Culture , eds. Ileana Baird and Christina Ionescu. Ashgate, 2014, 227-245.
"Illustrating the Spanish Conquest in the Long Eighteenth Century: Theodore de Bry and his Legacy," in Book Illustration in the Long Eighteenth Century: Reconfiguring the Visual Periphery of the Text , ed. Christina Ionescu. Cambridge Scholarly Press, 2011, 494-533.
3. Recent articles:
"The Persistence of Early-Modern Metadata in Online Environments and the Endurance of Imperial Discourse," HumanÍstica 90 (2021).
"Euro-Settler Place Naming Practices for North America through a Gendered and Racialized Lens," Terrae Incognitae 53.1 (2021), 5-25.
"Civilizing the Pre-Modern Spanish World through the Gaze of Modernity," Pleyade 23 (2019), 101-124.
"Race and Labour in Sixteenth-Century Seville through the Prism of Accounting Books (Hijuelas) from the Reales Alcázares," Renaissance Quarterly 71.4 (2018), 1272-1297.
"Women's Power and Material Exchange in Early Modern Transatlantic Spain," Journal of Women's History 30.1 (2018), 35-55.
"La fundación de pueblos españoles e indígenas en el siglo XVI," [Indigenous and Spanish Townfounding in the Sixteenth Century] Del mundo al mapa y del mapa al mundo: Objetos, escalas e imaginarios del territorio. Memorias del 6º Simposio Iberoamericano de Historia de la Cartografía , ed. Alejandra Vega Palma (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2017), 223-232.
"Early-Modern European and Indigenous Linguistic Influences on New Brunswick Place Names, " Journal of New Brunswick Studies 7.1 (2016), 15-36.
"Visualising the Cid and His Enemies in Print: The Matamoros Effect, " Image and Narrative 17.1 (2016), 5-14.
"The Travelogue of a Moroccan Ambassador to Charles II, 1690-1691," Journal of North African Studies 20.2 (2015), 284-302.
"Claiming California: FromTerra Incognitato Miguel de Venegas, " Terrae Incognitae 45.1 (2013), 2-18.
"Moros en la costa: Islam in Spanish Media and Visual Culture, " Revista de Historia Actual 29 (2012), 93-106.