Life across Borders: Locals, Migrants, Refugees - Einzelansicht

Focusing on (everyday) life in borderlands and across territorial boundaries, this seminar explores the constitution and change of power relations, territoriality, subjectivity, mobility, governance and statehood as manifested in borderlands between the late imperial 19^th and the 21^st centuries. The topic is approached through a variety of materials, including borderlands theory and the latest academic research on borders, frontiers, and boundaries, policy documents, popular accounts and films/documentary sources. The seminar draws from different examples, empires and nation-states alike. Geographically, it focuses on (Eastern) Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Students are strongly encouraged to engage with the topic prior to the seminar’s start and come to class with a suggestion which borderland they find intriguing and would like to understand more about.

Active class participation is expected. Further, students will give an in-class presentation, write a book review and write a final research paper (the length is determined by the Studienordnung according to which the student studies) written on a topic chosen in agreement with the professor.

-        Gabriel Popescu, Bordering and Ordering the Twenty-First Century. Understanding Borders. Lanham et al.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012.

-        Pamela Ballinger, Borders and the Rhythms of Displacement, Emplacement and Mobility, in: The Blackwell Companion to Border Studies, edited by Thomas Wilson and Hastings Donnan, 389-404. Oxford: Blackwell, 2012.

-        Béatrice von Hirschhausen, Hannes Grandits, Claudia Kraft, Dietmar Müller, and Thomas Serrier, Phantom Borders in Eastern Europe: Slavic Review 78, no. 2 (2019), 368-389. https://edoc.hu-berlin.de/bitstream/handle/18452/22395/phantom_borders_in_eastern_europe_a_new_concept_for_regional_research.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

-        Tatiana Zhurzhenko, Borderlands into Bordered Lands. Geopolitics of Identity in Post-Soviet Ukraine, Stuttgart: Ibidem, 2010.

-        Pamela Ballinger, The World Refugees Made. Decolonization and the Foundation of Postwar Italy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2020.