"The Power of Maps and the Politics of Borders" Papers

October 10-12, 2019

Papers for "The Power of Maps and the Politics of Borders" can be found below.  You will be required to enter a password provided by conference organizers to access them. Please contact the APS at [email protected] if you are attending the conference but have not yet received the password.

Papers are not to be cited or circulated without the written permission of the author


9:30 a.m.–10:30 a.m.: Panel 1: The Materiality of Maps

Making Mapping a Nation: The Challenges and Opportunities of Exhibiting Early American Maps"
Erin Holmes, University of Missouri 

“'Suitable for the Parlor of an American': The Legacy of Major Sebastian Bauman's Map of the Siege of Yorktown"
Kate McKinney, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation 

Archival Lines, Atlantic Diplomacy, and Negotiating the Northeast Boundary” 
Derek O'Leary, University of California, Berkeley

Comment: Martin Brückner, University of Delaware


11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.: Panel 2: Mapping Economies 

Things to Think With: The Use of Borders on Early Modern Maps of the British Atlantic"
Christian Koot, Towson University  

Mapping New Empires and Old: Albert Gallatin and the Cartographic Infrastructure of the Early Republic"
George Gallwey, Harvard University  

“'I Love to Stand Before a Map of the World': The Monthly Concert and Missionary Geography"
Emily Conroy-Krutz, Michigan State University 

Comment: Nicholas Gliserman, Chief Academic Officer, Game Learning 


1:30 p.m.–2:30 p.m.: Panel 3: Cartographic Technologies  

The Non-Cartographic Uses and Implications of Globes in Early America
Tamara Plakins Thornton, SUNY Buffalo 

Putting Science to the Test: Initiating the World's Longest Unfortified Boundary"
David Spanagel, Worchester Polytechnic Institute  

Finding the History of the World at the Bottom of the Ocean: Hydrography, Natural History, and the Sea in the Nineteenth Century"
Penelope Hardy, University of Wisconsin, La Crosse

Comment: Darin Hayton, Haverford College


2:45 p.m.–3:45 p.m.: Panel 4: Indigenous Geographies 

Maps and Boundaries in the Native South: The Creation of an Interior South in Chickasaw County"
Jeffrey Washburn, University of Mississippi 

Wielding the Power of Mapping: Cherokee Territoriality, Anglo-American Surveying, and the Creation of Borders in the Early Nineteenth-Century West"
Austin Stewart, Lehigh University  

Thinking Multidimensionally: Cherokee Boundaries Above, Below, and Beyond"
Julie Reed, Pennsylvania State University 

Comment: Maggie Blackhawk, University of Pennsylvania


Saturday, October 12

9:30 a.m.–10:30 a.m.: Panel 5: Contested Boundaries 

Clear Boundaries or Shared Territory: Chickasaw and Cherokee Resistance to American Colonization, 1792-1816"
Lucas Kelley, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 

Elusive Hinlopen, or the Cape's role in protracting the boundary dispute between Pennsylvania and Maryland"
Agnes Trouillet, University of Paris

Routes to the Pacific: Maps, Terraqueous Mobility, and American Westward Expansion, 1776-1849"
Sean Fraga, Princeton University

Comment: S. Max Edelson, University of Virginia


11:00 a.m.–12:00 a.m.: Panel 6: Beyond the Nation 

Strange Waters: The Transnational Origins of the First Coastal Survey of the United States of America"
Matthew Franco, College of William & Mary

Canada in the Early Republic: Jedidiah Morse's Continental Geography"
Jeffers Lennox, Wesleyan University

“William Darby's Map of Louisiana and the Extension of American Sovereignty over the 'Neutral Ground' in the Louisiana-Texas Borderland, 1806-1821"
Jackson Pearson, Texas Christian University

Comment: Bethel Saler, Haverford College