Stephanie Leitch

At the Academy, Leitch is developing her third book project, “New Worlds, Recycled Images: The Imprint of the Copy in Early Modern Travel Narratives.” The project argues that copied images drove early modern travel literature. While news of novelties fueled the circulation of travel narratives, European printers relied heavily on familiar images to convey new information. Like Dürer’s rhinoceros, printers circulated headless acephali, races of Amazons, and figures in fictive feathered skirts to far-flung corners of the globe, expanding their visual reach. Although many of these images might have seemed incredible, their recognizability made them easy to reproduce and disseminate. In some cases, copies standardized the narratives in which they were embedded; in others, they preserved errors in transmission. When redeployed in new contexts, old images generated new fictions about geography and resources. Through such copying, geopolitical constructs such as Amerasia and the Global South developed alongside cartographic mapping. As European demand for ore, precious objects, and raw materials intensified, visual tropes shifted as well. Rumors of wealth, for instance, attached themselves to feather skirts once associated with cannibals. Leitch’s project explores the ideological weight these copied images carried as they helped stereotype regions of the world and prepare them for conquest. In Berlin, Leitch will have access to major collections of early modern prints, including the Hans Albrecht von Derschau Collection housed at the Museum of Prints and Drawings (“Kupferstichkabinett”).