The Making of Borders: A Talk-19 March 2026

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 the Black Sea to the Atlantic

Thursday, 19 March 2026, 6.30 pm-8.00 pm (PST)

Joyce Walley Room, Museum of Vancouver

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

British Columbia)

1100 Chestnut Street, Vancouver

In English – In person and on Zoom (hybrid event)

Reception to follow

How did mapmakers, historians and poets imagine Europe’s

ever-changing borders at the dawn of modernity? Drawing on

a multilingual archive of maps and texts from Italy, Spain,

Portugal, France, Germany and Poland,

Dr. Piechocki explores the arbitrary emergence of Europe’s

eastern and western boundaries–from the Black Sea to the Iberian

Peninsula–and traces today’s concept of linear national

borders back to the fifteenth century and Europe’s transatlantic

expansion.

The talk will be followed by a round table with Heritage

Board archivist Genevieve Weber and toponymist Thomas

Trent, who will discuss map naming and the coexistence

of Indigenous, English, and French place names in Canada. The

discussion will be moderated by Dr. Stefano Gulmanelli (UBC)

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.

RSVP by email: info@dantesocietybc.ca or online

The Dante Alighieri Society of Vancouver – www.dantesocietybca.ca