This course will be offered in a digital format.

After you have been officially accepted you will receive all the necessary information on how this course will be structured.

In the US context, border studies came about as an academic field in the 1980s. First it concentrated on the study of culture and society along the US-Mexico border. However, the imaginary and theoretical implications of the border, e.g. as a site of exchange, exclusion, inclusion and protection, reach far beyond the study of the US-Mexico borderlands and the 20th century. Scholarship in Border Studies includes topics that are central to American ultural Studies, such as the following: sexual, gender, ethnic, racial distinctions and their social and symbolic constructions. Theoretical issues such as transgression, transnationalism, border regimes and cultural citizenship have been discussed as part of the study of borders. The history and mythology of the Frontier – important issues of American Studies – must be re-assessed within the critical study of border regimes. President Donald Trump’s border policy newly illustrates the significance of the US-Mexico border for US society. The reading will include fiction, historiography, cultural theory, gender studies, and visual texts.

BA IKÜ 4. Semester, Referat mit schriftlicher Ausarbeitung (IKÜ: 8-1 (4 LP))