Feminist & Queer Ethnographies: Borders and Boundaries

Undergraduate

This seminar gives students a storm’s eye view of contemporary crises, where borders are as volatile as the ring of a wedding bell or the birth of a child. Feminist and queer ethnographies explore the geopolitical lines and social divides that define and confine us. Manifesting through laws, social norms, and physical barriers, borders and boundaries shape our identities, turning the intimate act of living into a fiercely political one. We consider them as lived experiences that cross militarized lines—as the everyday realities of families, detention centers, workplaces, universities, and even nightclubs. Our readings trace the fluidity of borders, the extension of the global north's influence, and the internal colonialism that redraws the landscapes of nations. Contemporary ways of bridging time and space are profoundly gendered, sexualized racialized, and class-specific, capable of materializing with sudden intensity for some and remaining imperceptible to others, morphing from ephemeral lines to seemingly permanent barriers. The course is an invitation to think beyond the map – to understand borders as something people live, challenge, and transform. Our intellectual battleground is the liminal space where geopolitics meets the raw human struggle for recognition, peeling back the layers of political theatre to witness the making and unmaking of our borderlands. Anchored by a “radical hope for living otherwise,” the seminar also aims to expand the intellectual horizons necessary for dreaming of, and working towards, the world to come. HU , SO T 4pm-5:55pm