As people in North America gather on Monday, April 8 to witness a rare total solar eclipse, those in Niagara will also have the chance to learn more about celestial events through time.

At Brock’s Eclipse on the Escarpment event, the Department of English Language and Literature and Department of Classics and Archeology in the Faculty of Humanities will host educational exhibits sharing valuable insight into how humans have interacted with celestial events dating back to ancient Greece.

Leah Knight, Professor of English and Medieval and Renaissance Studies, has always been intrigued by the cross-over of arts and science.

Knight, whose research is focused on Renaissance England, began wondering what eclipses might have been like for people in early modern England.

She found inspiration in her research on The Pulter Project through compiling the long-neglected manuscript of 17th century poet Hester Pulter (1605-1678).

“Pulter and her work had been completely missing from the scholarly conversation until a prolific manuscript of hers was discovered in the late 20th century which contained 120 poems — the first of which is entitled The Eclipse,” Knight said.

Given the war-torn history of Europe at the time, and with the scientific revolution underway, Knight was fascinated by how leaders of the day assigned political or cultural meaning to celestial phenomena to further their agendas, a notion explored by Pulter.

“Pulter knew about the wave of scientific discovery happening during her era, including the findings of Galileo, and even as an isolated woman in the English countryside, she had a thirst to know more about the truth of the world and explored these big ideas through her poetry,” Knight said.

Knight and her third-year English class will use Pulter’s poem as a jumping off point to explore historical visual, verbal and poetic representations of eclipses to share with visitors at Brock.

Going back further in the history books, the Department of Classics and Archaeology will feature ancient accounts of eclipses, including the science of early astronomers, in their exhibit.

Classics and Archaeology Professor Allison Glazebrook said the department’s display will have information on the Antikythera Mechanism, a hand-held tool used in Ancient Greece to calculate and display celestial information.

“It is fascinating to learn about an ancient mechanism possibly used in predicting eclipses and how we can (or cannot) interpret the use of unusual objects found in archaeological contexts,” Glazebrook said.

Register for Brock’s free event through the Eclipse on the Escarpment web page.