Loyola University Chicago

Department of History

Newberry Library Undergraduate Seminar

Newberry Library

Newberry Library Undergraduate Seminar

NLUS 2024 Application

Medicines, Poisons, and Landscapes of Care in the Early Americas

Instructors: Kat Lecky, Loyola University Chicago and Josefrayn Sanchez Perry, Loyola University of Chicago

This course compares Indigenous Mexico and the English colonies to place into conversation the ways they collected and curated natural life. As these societies organized plants and people into coherent ecosystems, they also reterritorialized these organisms into maps of power justifying the extraction of resources and the oppressions of cultures. We will consider a series of archival case studies that show the mechanisms by which these societies in the Americas generated knowledge about themselves and others. The goal of the course is to explore the ethics of collections that enmeshed humans and nonhumans alike into systems of marginalization and exclusion still shaping the spatial politics of coloniality.

This course will meet Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2-5pm from January 16 to May 2.

Applications for the Newberry Library Undergraduate Seminar awill be accepted soon.  This year's seminar is entitled “Medicines, Poisons, and Landscapes of Care in the Early Americas" and will be taught by Professors Kat Lecky and Josefrayn Sanchez Perry of Loyola University Chicago. For a full description of the course and further details, visit the Newberry Library's Undergraduate Seminar Website.

Five Loyola undergraduates will be selected to participate in this six-credit interdisciplinary seminar, which also includes students from DePaul, Roosevelt, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. The seminar allows students to combine an intensive classroom experience with independent research carried out in the Newberry Library, one of the country's richest archives of primary source materials on history and culture.

The seminar is open to qualified students in all disciplines and counts as both Writing Intensive and Engaged Learning. Those interested in applying to graduate school and to many professional schools, whether law school or library science, have found the Newberry Seminar an exhilarating challenge and an opportunity to work with both students and faculty from other universities at a very high level.

Download the NLUS 2024 Application here soon. Further information can be found at the Newberry Seminar Web site. Please email Prof. Brad Hunt, History Department Chair at dhunt1@luc.edu if you have further questions.

Applications are due via e-mail by noon on October 31, 2023. Participants will be selected and notified by November 5, before the pre-registration period.

Previous NLUS Topics:  

2023: “Inventing Mexico: Maps, Manuscripts, and Materiality, 1521-1921”

2022: “Writing Migration: Chicago, Haymarket to 1968”

2021: “Chicago: City of Art, Industry, and Labor”

2020: “Shakespeare’s Afterlives: Literature, Philosophy, Politics, and the Visual Arts, 1623-2020”

2019: “Modern Literature and Art in Chicago, 1900-1960"

2018: “Censorship and Freedom of Expression in an Era of Religious Change: Western Europe, 1450-1789

2017: “Exchange before Orientalism: Asia and Europe, 1500-1800,” Laura Hostetler (University of Illinois at Chicago) and Ellen McClure (University of Illinois at Chicago)

2016:Break the Chains: Revolt, Rebellion, and Resistance in the World of Atlantic Slavery," John Donoghue (Loyola University Chicago) and Jeffrey Glover (Loyola University Chicago)

2015: “Mexico and Peru through Word and Image, 1492-1820,” Priscilla Archibald (Roosevelt University) and Delia Consentino (DePaul University)

2014: “Representing the American Civil War: Art, History and Literature, 1820-1890,” Marcy J. Dinius (DePaul University) and Margaret M. Storey (DePaul University).

2013: “Exchange before Orientalism: Asia and Europe, 1500-1800,” Laura Hostetler (University of Illinois at Chicago) and Ellen McClure (University of Illinois at Chicago)

2012: "Texts and Technologies: From Manuscripts to Early Printed Books and Beyond," David Halsted (History, University of Illinois at Chicago) and Edward Wheatley (English, Loyola University Chicago)

2011: "Constructing the Queen: Elizabeth I in Political Pamphlets, Poetry, Personal Correspondence, Portraiture, Plays, Pulp Fiction, and Motion Pictures," Regina Buccola (English and Women's Studies, Roosevelt University) and Celeste Chamberland (History, Roosevelt University)

2010: "Islands: Missionaries, Migration, and Labor in the Atlantic World and on the Pacific Rim," Eric S. Gellman (History, Roosevelt University) and Lori Pierce (American Studies, DePaul University)

2009: "New Nation, New Culture: The United States in the Age of the Early Republic, 1770-1850," Larry Howe (English, Roosevelt University) and Diane Dillon (Newberry Library)

2008: “Islam and the West: European and American Views of the Muslim World, 1450-1900,” Katrin Schultheiss (University of Illinois at Chicago) and Kim Searcy (History, Loyola)

2007: “Constructing the Queen: Elizabeth I in Correspondence, Portraiture, Plays, Poetry, Pulp Fiction, and Motion Pictures.  

2006: “Exchange before Orientalism: Encounters between Asia and Europe, 1500-1800,” Ellen McClure (French, UIC) and Laura Hostetler (History, UIC). 

2005: "Sites of Democracy and Difference: U.S. Popular Culture and Entertainment, 1880-1930," Ann Brigham (English and Women's and Gender Studies, Roosevelt) and Lewis Erenberg (History, Loyola) 

2004: "New Nation/New Culture: American Culture in the Early Republic, 1770-1850," Douglas Bradburn (Roosevelt) and Lawrence Howe (English, Roosevelt)  

2003: "Constructing the Queen," Regina Buccola (English and Women's Studies, Roosevelt) and Robert Bucholz (History, Loyola)  

2002: "The Pan-Hispanic World, 1492-1825," Glen Carrnan (Spanish, DePaul) and Valentina Tikoff (History, DePaul)  

2001: "Experiencing the Civil War," Robin Grey (English, UIC) and Margaret Storey (History, DePaul)  

2000: "London Town and Bath Spa: Two Concepts of Eighteenth-Century Urbanity," Robert Bucholz (History, Loyola) and Caryn Chaden (English, DePaul)  

1999: "Mapping Identities: Racial, Ethnic, and Gender Configurations in Modernist Representations," Pamela Caughie (English, Loyola) and Ayana Karanja (Black World Studies, Loyola)  

1998: "New Nation/New Culture: American Culture in the Age of the Early Republic," John Burton (History, DePaul) and Lawrence Howe (English, Roosevelt)  

1997: "Competing Landscapes in the Struggle for an American National Identity," Robin Grey (English, UIC) and David Sokol (Art History, UIC)