Nine maps of the voyage of Columbus

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Professor Benjamin Keen was born April 25, 1913, and completed his A.B. degree at Muhlenberg College in 1936.  He continued his education at LeHigh University where he obtained the Master of Arts degree in history (1939) and Yale University where he earned the Ph.D. (1941).  After graduation from Yale he stayed on as an instructor in history from 1943 to 1945, then taught at Amherst (1945-1946), West Virginia University (1946-1956), and Jersey State College (1956-1959).  Professor Keen joined the History Faculty at Northern Illinois University in 1959 and remained here until his retirement in 1981.  A well-known scholar in his fields of pre-Columbian American history and the social history of colonial Latin America, Professor Keen lists among his publications: David Curtis DeForest and the Revolution of Buenos Aires (1947), Readings in American Civilization (1955), Life and Labor in Old Mexico: The Brief and Summary Relation of Alonso de Zorita (1963), Bartolome de las Casas in History (DeKalb: NIU Press, 1971).  He also translated and edited Jean Hippolyte Maries's The Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella.