The course, taught spring term 2000, invites students to explore ideas about the new world as it is constructed in written documents and various visual and plastic arts, including woodcuts and illustrations, maps and paintings, as well as sculpture and architecture. While its primary focus is on the importance of the idea of the new world for English culture, the course also considers sixteenth and seventeenth century translations of Spanish and Portuguese narratives of exploration so vital to English conceptions of America. Students in the course learn that various means of representation are brought to bear in processes of discovery and conquest.
Narratives cooperate with visual depictions in ways that facilitate both conception and deception.
Maps, for instance, not only convey geographical information but are also shaped by ideological meanings. In teaching the course, Jensen and Crumbley look at cultural constructions of America from the early sixteenth century through 1630, attempting to capture the vision of America as it might have appeared to people of sixteenth century England. Initially, as Jensen points out, America was seen as in the way of getting to the rich markets of India. Visual representations often feature tobacco, the original cash crop of the Americas, pointing to another key feature of how America was seen as economic windfall. Later, in conquest and settlement, competing representations arose.