James Akerman


 

Dr. James Akerman is Director of the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography at the Newberry Library, a post he has held since 1996, having worked at the Newberry since 1985. He holds a Ph.D. in Geography from Penn State University and is the author of many studies of the social and political aspects of cartography, railroad and road maps, and the history of atlases. He has edited or co-edited four collections of essays in the history of cartography and has curated or co-curated four major exhibits, most recently, "Ptolemy’s Geography and Renaissance Mapmakers," and "Maps: Finding Our Place in the World." In 2003 he completed “Historic Maps in K-12 Classrooms,” a Web site supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities that uses digital images of original maps from the Newberry’s collections to teach the geographic dimensions of American history. For more information on the Newberry’s the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography, visit: http://www.newberry.org/smith/smithhome.html