Witnessing Disaster: Fleuriau de Bellevue and the Writing of Seismic Histories in Italy and Guatemala, 1717–1796
ZOOM Lecture-Lecture by John Sullivan, Ph.D. Student in History, Northwestern University. Recipient of the 2023–24 Kenneth Karmiole Endowed Graduate Research Between 1788 and 1793, the Frenchman Louis-Benjamin Fleuriau de Bellevue (1761–1852) trekked the length of Italy and climbed its Alpine peaks, a long sojourn that capped his years of training as a geologist and natural historian. Toward the end of his journeys, he passed through Sicily and Calabria, in the peninsula’s far south, to observe the devastating aftermath of a series of earthquakes that had rocked the region in 1783. In this talk, John Sullivan will incorporate Bellevue’s travel notebooks into...