Mapping Borders. Cartography & Modern Early Europe from Ukraine to Spain

The Dante Alighieri Society of BC in Vancouver, the Museum of Vancouver & the Consulate General of Italy in Vancouver invite you to a talk by Dr. Katharina N. Piechocki

"The Making of Borders. Cartography and Early Modern Europe from Ukraine to the Atlantic"

How did mapmakers, historians and poets imagine Europe’s ever-changing borders and contact zones on the brink of modernity? Drawing from a multilingual archive of maps and texts from Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany and Poland, Piechocki asks about the arbitrary nature of the rise and understanding of Europe’s eastern and western borders—from Ukraine to the Iberian Peninsula. This talk traces the history of arbitrary linear boundaries—which have profoundly impacted our understanding of national borders until today—back to the fifteenth century and the Transatlantic expansion of Europe.

The event will be moderated by Dr. Arianna Dagnino (University of British Columbia)

Thursday, 19 March 2026,

7.00 pm-8.30 pm (Pacific Standard Time)

Joyce Walley Room, Museum of Vancouver

1100 Chestnut Street

Vancouver BC V6J 3J9

In person - In English

Reception to follow

FREE EVENT – Voluntary $10 Donation for Non-Members

(Become a Member! Yearly membership: $40 - The annual membership provides free access to all our paid events) 

You can pay for your donations and membership via email Interac at [email protected]

Dr. Katharina N. Piechocki is Associate Professor of Romance Studies and French Literature at the University of British Columbia. She previously taught Comparative Literature at Harvard University. Her research focuses on early modern French and Romance literature, with particular interests in cartography, gender, translation, theatre, and opera. She holds doctorates from the University of Vienna and NYU. She is the author of Cartographic Humanism: The Making of Early Modern Europe (University of Chicago Press, 2019), shortlisted for the 2022 European Studies Book Award, and is currently completing a book on the origins of the opera libretto.

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