In her Fireside Chat, Agnès Trouillet examined how the surveying of the city of Philadelphia and the province of Pennsylvania, notably under first Surveyor General Thomas Holme, laid out the map of governance imagined by William Penn. The use of property survey profoundly reshaped the space, ensuring land tenure but also granting proximity and access to the seats of political power.

Dr. Agnès Trouillet is an Associate Professor of British Studies at University Paris Nanterre. Her research focuses on contemporary and colonial political history, more specifically on Pennsylvania with which she has a special relationship after having taught four years at the University of Pennsylvania. She is interested in the issue of division as generative of power, and her current project examines the role of William Penn’s settlement design in reshaping space and sovereignty in the Delaware Valley. She has a forthcoming article on the boundary dispute between Pennsylvania and Maryland in the volume from the American Philosophical Society Conference “The Power of Maps and the Politics of Borders.” Dr. Trouillet is currently a fellow at the Library Company of Philadelphia.

This chat originally aired at 7:00 p.m. Thursday, March 4, 2021.