For the English and Algonquian inhabitants of 17th-century New England, paper maps were a rare and powerful tool. Mapmakers created them to establish borders, facilitate cross-cultural communication, and record spatial information. But maps were also used to misinform, steal land, and erase Indigenous cultural presence. In this talk, Nathan Braccio, Assistant Professor of History at Clark University, will explore how both Algonquian-speaking communities and English colonists made maps as tools in a struggle for cultural and physical control of the Northeast. In doing so, he will investigate how maps, including those that we interact with in the present day, promote particular value-laden ways of understanding the world.
This event continues the Roots of Everything, a lecture series sponsored by Early Modernists Unite (EMU)—a faculty collaborative bringing together scholars of medieval and early modern Europe and America—in conjunction with the Alice Coonley Higgins Institute for Arts and Humanities. The series highlights various aspects of modern existence originating in the early modern world by connecting past and present knowledge.
With thanks to the Department of History at Clark University for its support.
Admission is free and open to the public.
Also streamed live – register now: https://bit.ly/rootsmapmaking
About the Speaker
Nathan Braccio is a historian of early modern New England. His research focuses on Indigenous and environmental history. Prior to coming to Clark, he taught at Lesley University and was a postdoctoral fellow at Utah State University. His current book project, Creating New England, Defending the Northeast: Contested Algonquian and English Spatial Worlds, 1500–1700, investigates the different ways Algonquian-speaking peoples and Puritan colonists marked, described, and mapped the landscape. Braccio’s next project explores the culture of agrarian violence in colonial America. He earned his doctorate from the University of Connecticut and his master’s and bachelor’s degrees from American University.
