Professor Stephanie Leitch Part of Collaborative Fellowship at Brown University
Associate Professor Stephanie Leitch has recently completed a Collaborative Cluster Fellowship at the John Carter Brown Library with Lisa Voigt, Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Ohio State University, to advance their book project tentatively entitled The Epistemology of the Copy in Early Modern Travel Narratives. Mining the Brown Library’s unparalleled collection of early modern travel reports for recycled illustrations, the duo found these copied images to be a critical part of the early modern printer’s apparatus. Their project aims to credit the copied print as an important cornerstone of publishing history. Insofar as repetition encouraged and standardized knowledge, scholars examining the history of travel writing need to consider the role played by copied prints in mediating knowledge derived from travel; the recycled images also contribute to the development of visual literacy.