Borders are everywhere, yet there's nothing natural about them. Planners and architects impose and redraw them, inventing new places and identities in the process. Daily life is full of borders too. The boundaries between public and private, between cities, suburbs, and rural environments are accompanied by more conceptual limits: the lines that mark rich and poor, citizen and noncitizen. Studying border spaces and cultures is one way of figuring out how they work, and under what conditions they can be crossed or even abolished. In this course, we investigate borders of all kinds through critical and literary texts, writing exercises, media-making, and collaborative interdisciplinary projects. Special attention will be devoted to film and photography about border territories.
- Instructor: Nicholas Morrissey-Gamso