About the Author

Steven Seegel

E-Mail: sseegel@utexas.edu

Website: http://stevenseegel.com

Steven Seegel is Professor of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Map Men: Transnational Lives and Deaths of Geographers in the Making of East Central Europe (University of Chicago Press, 2018), Ukraine under Western Eyes (Harvard University Press, 2013), and Mapping Europe’s Borderlands: Russian Cartography in the Age of Empire (University of Chicago Press, 2012). He has contributed to Chicago’s international history of cartography series and has translated over 300 entries from Russian and Polish for the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, in multiple volumes, published jointly by USHMM and Indiana University Press. Professor Seegel is a former director at Harvard University of the Ukrainian Research Institute’s summer exchange program.

Contributions by Author: Steven Seegel

Issue 18
digital literacy
erasure
maps
social media outreach
solidarity
Ukraine

Geopolitical Frames, Bold Lines

Online Global Solidarity and Mapping Russia’s War against Ukraine

In social media, transnational historiography, and the history of modern maps, frames are ever present and always relevant. Talking of modern Ukrainian geography and cartography, we might, as academics, relentlessly critique arbitrarily constructed lines. However, to say that all borders are artificial tools of propaganda or fictional inventions will not take us far. Ukrainians require bold lines and respect for sovereignty, and their overlaid thematic maps serve many purposes. Regarding the political geographies of boundaries protected by international law, independent Ukrainians must guard against geopolitical interference, often by relying on respect for fixed lines and frames. This is necessary both for practical NATO defense and alignment with European norms, as well as within higher education settings, where comparative, borderlands, and transnational studies foster debate on colonial, postcolonial,…