Voltaire Lecture Livestream: On Savage Shores with Caroline Dodds Pennock, Tuesday 14th November, from 7.30 pm (library doors will open at 19:15 for a 19:30 start).
Although this is a free event, booking is essentail as spaces are limited. You can book online via eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk (donations to Exeter Humanists will be welcome on the night)
A free streaming of the annual Voltaire Lecture in London, from renowned historian Dr Caroline Dodds Pennock. Brought to Exeter Library courtesy of Exeter Humanists.
About the lecture
We have long been taught to presume that modern global history began when the 'Old World' encountered the 'New', when Christopher Columbus 'discovered' America in 1492. But, as Caroline Dodds Pennock will demonstrate in The Voltaire Lecture 2023, for tens of thousands of Aztecs, Maya, Totonacs, Inuit and others – enslaved people, diplomats, explorers, servants, traders – the reverse was true: they discovered Europe.
For them, Europe comprised savage shores, a land of riches and marvels, yet perplexing for its brutal disparities of wealth and quality of life – and its baffling beliefs. The story of these Indigenous Americans abroad is a story of abduction, loss, cultural appropriation, and, as they saw it, of apocalypse – a story that has largely been absent from our collective imagination of the times
Drawing on their surviving literature and poetry, and subtly layering European eyewitness accounts against the grain, Pennock will deliver a sweeping account of the Indigenous American presence in, and impact on, early modern Europe.
About Caroline Dodds Pennock
Dr Caroline Dodds Pennock is Senior Lecturer in International History at the University of Sheffield and the only British Aztec historian. Her first book, Bonds of Blood: Gender, Lifecycle and Sacrifice in Aztec Culture won the Royal Historical Society's Gladstone Prize for 2008. On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe was published in 2023 and was BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week.
She has appeared on TV programmes for broadcasters including the BBC, the Smithsonian Channel, and Netflix, and has acted as a named historical consultant for several TV projects, as well as writing for popular publications including Scientific American, BBC History, BBC World Histories, BBC Knowledge, and History Today.