Connecting Across Time and Space: Using Maps and Memory to Teach the Eighteenth Century

Molly Nebiolo

September 16, 2025

It is a common experience for faculty who teach vast early America to receive blank stares from many of their students, no matter the topic or if the course is a gen-ed or major-specific elective. At some point, there will be a lack of interest or feeling of excitement in the course. In a post-COVID-19 world where students (and faculty!) are more likely to feel anxious and burned out, even on day one, it can be a challenge to generate interactive activities to foster interest and reduce instances of the “deadpan stare” we have all felt upon entering our classrooms.

One way I have found success in addressing this universal problem is through heavy integration of maps into my course content. Those who focus on spatial history in the field can attest to this: maps and visualizing space provide a new way of engaging and connecting students in the classroom to the primary-source content we study in class. We all exist in space(s), we all encounter place(s), and we all have opinions about maps, directions, and locations. I have leaned on this method of teaching early American history—through maps and ideas of space/ placemaking—and integrated it throughout the semester as a touchstone for students when recalling earlier topics. My students enjoy the way visualizations are brought into discussing people and places from hundreds of years ago, and they like the repetition of thinking through how to “see” the events or locations we study at every major point in early American history. It allows them to recall the history we are learning so changes over time can be seen and elaborated on by the end of the semester. Their feedback has largely been positive; with a few common reflections that it has helped them see the work around them in a more intentional way.

map of the eastern half of North America

John Mitchell, Thomas Kitchin, and Andrew Millar. A map of the British and French dominions in North America, with the roads, distances, limits, and extent of the settlements, humbly inscribed to the Right Honourable the Earl of Halifax, and the other Right Honourable the Lords Commissioners for Trade & Plantations. [London; Sold by And: Millar, 1755]. Courtesy of: Library of Congress.

The course

In my 200-level Colonial America(s) course that is largely taken by non-majors for a core “Texts and Ideas” requirement at Butler, I have found that maps, not just pictures or images, offer students a specific opportunity to think about perspectives and experiences of the people who participated in the events we learn about across the semester. This course contains units that span the different empires that participated in the colonization of the Americas, but is foregrounded with a unit discussing Native American and Indigenous history. The course ends with a unit introducing the Seven Years’ War, which I then pick up in my other course on the American Revolution(s).

The assignment

On the first day of class I ask students to map out where early America “was.” This usually gets students thinking critically about the way we “see” North America and figure out “where it all happened.” They pick up the fact that highlighting the 13 colonies wasn’t necessarily the right answer to my question, but they take time to ponder what I could mean with the prompt. We then have a short discussion and lecture on “vast early America” and why we need to consider what is happening across all of the Americas, as history is not something that happens in a vacuum.

I bring back mapping activities in the subsequent units of the class. Each week, when we are working through a primary-source document together, I ask students to map out what they are envisioning as they encounter an event or experience from a colonial American. I leave it open ended so they can choose from a male, female, enslaved, or free perspective, or even that of a figure we have already covered in class. We then compare those maps or images to other maps at that time, like this Catawba map of Carolina or engraving of the Pequot War. We devote time to discussing the realities of space and place: from where women are “found” on maps, the time it takes to get from point A to point B, the types of climates, or restrictions that came with moving between colonies or across empires. I make the concept of “the map” central to how we learn about early American history because it unifies my students with the content: they all can relate to the way space is mapped out. Whether they are from big cities or small farm towns, they use GPS technology in their cars or Google Maps on their phones, so we all interact with maps and ideas of place. Maybe some of my students grew up using old atlases in their cars (so retro!) or remember how long it takes to drive across their home state. These personal experiences are cultivated in these mapping activities as a way to draw in students’ interests.

Centering maps, space, and place in how I teach the early American period also provides the opportunity to discuss early American materials. We learn about the resources needed to make a map, the time it takes to survey an area then return home to print maps, and then the various powers and uses that come from the production of a map. This opens up wider discussions on colonialism and the power of narratives that can be seen, not just read. This is central to the core requirement this class is cross-listed with: texts and ideas. Through maps, we question and realize the scope of what we consider a text and whose ideas are found in these historic texts.

Two hand-drawn maps by students in Nebiolo’s class. One was completed by a student who is quite familiar with campus (top) and the other was done by a first-year student (bottom). Note the difference in detail, like the number of buildings drawn and the names of buildings given.

At the end of the semester, we finish with a discussion about how maps are saved and how they record history. We look at different maps of our campus over time after I give them time in class to make their own map of Butler’s campus (see Figure 2). Doing this exercise at the end of the semester offers first-year students time to familiarize themselves with the campus. We then compare our individual maps across the genders present in the room, the majors, and the years (first-year students vs. seniors, say), and compare commuter students with those living on campus; all maps are juxtaposed with the historic or professional maps of campus. This reinforces the point that maps are snapshots of a person’s imagination, reality, or aspirations; it is difficult to produce an unbiased map of time and place. We end the class with this more personal reflection of our own maps and internal map-making of space so we can further think about the personal perspectives of space we covered in class: Indigenous, colonial, men, women, children, the enslaved, and the indentured. How might they have made this map? What were their limitations or opportunities?

Future implications

I keep this set of assignments unstructured in how I bring them up in class (usually done in class, not as a graded homework) because it can be better adapted into other courses, no matter what aspects of history I am teaching. I think it allows for easy revision and adoption by others into their classes or pedagogies. This kind of teaching can be a way of provoking in-class discussion across the term, or it can be written down as a prompt used for quizzes, final projects, or intro/exit tickets. The open-ended nature of the ongoing assignment also leads me to adopt it organically in spots throughout the class that make sense; allowing for there to be minimal challenges when I have implemented it. Has it been a couple weeks since I last incorporated this map pedagogy in class? Is it near a stressful point in the semester when I know students might want to do something more hands-on and visual? By doing this in a more free-flow way, I have found that, overall, students are eager to engage with this type of assignment or prompt.

In a world where faculty and students seem increasingly burnt out, and the fear of AI use in a classroom makes critical analysis of sources a daunting task, I believe centering the teaching of early American history on maps and space/place can be one solution to these problems. It can also inspire non-majors to grasp the importance of learning history, help them recognize and apply our civic engagement with how the world is displayed to us in maps, and show them some of the similarities (and differences) we have with those that lived over 300 years ago.