Category: Portsmouth

Lecture Explores School Girl Maps in Maine

South Berwick, Maine- Old Berwick Historical Society will present a lecture by Dr. Libby Bischof Thursday, April 27 at 7:00pm at the First Parish Federated Church in South Berwick. fter the American Revolution, dozens of academies to educate young women opened up throughout Maine and New England. Geography was a significant aspect of education in 19th-century America. Dr. Bischof will discuss the fascinating and understudied genre of “school girl maps.” Young women drew, copied, embellished maps, atlases, and globes. These decorative manuscripts reveal much about the education of women in 19th-century New England, and the personal and family histories of the individual young women who crafted the maps.

A nineteenth-century American cultural historian, Professor Bischof specializes in the history of photography, particularly in Maine.  She is the co-author of the 2015 book Maine Photography: A History, 1840-2015.  She is the Executive Director of the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education at USM. Prof. Bischof has received fellowship support for her research and publications from the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and Research Center for American Modernism, the Beinecke Library at Yale University, the Center for Creative Photography, the Peter E. Palmquist Foundation for Historical Photographic Research and the Maine Women Writers Collection

The lecture is free and open to the public, no registration is required. The lecture will be recorded and posted to the society’s website. The Old Berwick Historical Society’s 2023 lectures are generously sponsored by Kennebunk Savings and supported by historical society members and donors.