As of this issue, Terrae Incognitae (TI) has both a new Editor-in-Chief and a new Book Reviews Editor. Before I introduce myself, let me sincerely thank Richard Weiner, who has been at the journal’s helm since 2019, and David Buisseret, who has served as Book Reviews Editor since 2008 (prior to that, for twenty-four years, from 1984 to 2007, he was Editor of TI). David’s years of dedicated service to the journal deserve our deepest gratitude. All of us who have worked with him appreciated immensely his good humor, eloquent command of the English language, and constant support and assistance. TI has remained a high-quality journal due to the hard work of its Editors and all those who second them as Associate Editors, Book Reviews Editor, and members of the Editorial Advisory Board. I will do my best to follow their example!
I am a lifetime member of the Society for the History of the Discoveries, and a Professor Emeritus of California State University, Fullerton. I have a wide range of research interests that span the Early Modern era to the twentieth century, focused mostly on France, both the metropole, and the colonies. In terms of the history of exploration, my first book was a study of French merchants in the city of Rouen engaged in commerce in the Atlantic World in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. I have also authored a work on Samuel de Champlain, and my current research includes a project on early modern French colonies in Guiana, about which I have published several articles, including in TI. I reside in France, and my husband, Bernard Allaire, is also a historian of early modern French exploration and colonization. Hence, I was very excited to have the opportunity to take the helm of the journal.
Danielle Alesi is an Assistant Professor of History at Nazareth University in Rochester, NY. She teaches classes on Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern History. Her research is focused on travel and colonization in the Americas and uses travel narratives to explore Renaissance European constructions of the environment, animals, and food in the conquest and colonization of the early modern Atlantic World. Her first monograph, Eating Animals in the Early Modern Atlantic World. Consuming Empire, 1492–1700, is forthcoming with Amsterdam University Press. Danielle’s enthusiasm and energy are infectious, and I am confident she will be a great addition to our editorial team.
And that team has grown this year as well. Our Associate Editors are John Hairr, who specializes in maritime history, especially of the United States, and Greg McIntosh, whose focus is the early history of cartography. Both are published authors and long-time Society for the History of the Discoveries stalwarts. In addition, we now have aboard Lindsay Braun, an African historian at the University of Oregon, and Sandhya Patel, based at the Université Paul Valéry-Montpellier 3, here in France, who works especially on eighteenth century exploration. The breadth of knowledge encompassed in this editorial team will support me enormously in my work as Editor.
Our August 2024 issue is a special issue, organized by Lauren Beck and Hanna Barnett, and focuses on disease in exploration, from the early modern era through the nineteenth century. Al Rocca’s article makes the case for why the epidemic that struck Hispaniola in 1493, upon the arrival there of Columbus’ second voyage, and soon spread to other islands in the Caribbean, was most likely a zoonotic, specifically, a form of swine flu. Cortney Berg’s piece examines Theodor De Bry’s representations of 16th-century images of Timucua medical practices, and how they blend European imagined constructions of Indigenous peoples with actual information about Indigenous treatments of illness. The final contribution, from Kelly Watson, is on the perceptions of the prion disease kuru in twentieth-century New Guinea, and the ways in which physician and anthropologist D. Carleton Gajdusek, who studied kuru among the Fore people intensively, embodied, literally and figuratively, modern colonialism. Lauren and Hanna have written an introduction to the issue, which I am confident you will enjoy!