Rosenberry Lecture Series: How Maps Reveal (and Conceal) History (Evening Session)

For 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. Above all, maps remind us that the past is not just a chronological story, but also a spatial one. Join us in exploring some key maps that have shaped our shared history, ranging from iconic battle plans to unknown treasures by ordinary Americans.

This lecture is part of the 2025-2026 Rosenberry Lecture Series. Length of the program may vary.

About the Speaker
Susan Schulten is Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Denver, where she has taught since 1996. She 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 currently writing a book about Richard Edes Harrison, one of the most influential mapmakers of the twentieth century. For several years she served as history editor of the long-form podcast, Lost Highways, and for four years contributed to the New York Times’ Disunion series commemorating the American Civil War. At the University of Denver, Professor Schulten teaches courses on Civil War and Reconstruction, Nineteenth-Century America, the history of American ideas and culture, the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, the Great Depression, the Cold War, war and the presidency, Abraham Lincoln, and the methods and philosophy of history.

A hearing loop assistive listening system is available for this program to assist guests with hearing loss.