Robert Caldwell

Indians in Their Proper Place: Culture Areas, Linguistic Stocks, and the Genealogy of a Map

Caldwell’s dissertation-to-book manuscript project explores some two hundred years of European and Euro-American thematic maps of American Indian homelands, languages, and culture elements. Examining primary sources including correspondence, maps, and scholarly writings, Caldwell argues that these maps first developed not only as part of a transatlantic circulation of ideas regarding natural science, philology, and the place of American Indians in the world, but also in the context of eighteenth-century US and German nationalism, including the emergence of the social sciences, the transfer of ideas between the two continents, and the institutional consolidation of the disciplines on both sides of the Atlantic. Elucidating the transatlantic evolution of the maps, the research uncovers the world view of the map creators, offering readers a window into networks of power and production.

Generous funding for this Fellowship provided by the Katrin H. Lamon Endowment.