Shows
Borders Talk: Dots, Dashes & the Stories They TellBorders and CitizenshipSend us a MessageThis episode is the first time we’ve asked each other “how are you?” Yes, we’ve checked. Here are two “rankings” for passports: the Henley Passport Index, which describes itself as “the only one of its kind based on exclusive data from the International Air Transport Authority (IATA)” and the Global Passport Power Rank, which at the time of recording, ranked as “equal” passports issued by Canada, the UK, and Cyprus. Eagle-eyed listeners will note this has changed. Thinking about the nationality/citizenship distinction, here’s an example of that slippage in the...
2025-10-3034 minBorders Talk: Dots, Dashes & the Stories They TellBorders and HospitalitySend us a MessageSpecial thanks to our guest speakers, whose border stories we gratefully share with their consent: Jenneba Sie-Jallok, Loraine Masiya Mponela, Ambreen Hai, and Gaura Narayan.Gillian manages to get the name of her hometown wrong in this episode: it's Victoria, not Vancouver (which is not on Vancouver Island!).We recorded this episode at the brilliant “Hostile Environments and Hospitable Praxes” conference, organised by Dr Rachel Gregory Fox at the University of Kent, UK, 23-24 June 2025. Thank you, Rachel! As we started to think about actually doing a podcas...
2025-08-2850 minBorders Talk: Dots, Dashes & the Stories They TellBorders and VulnerabilitySend us a MessageThe Urban Dictionary’s definition of “tsunamied” is very much not what Zalfa intended. In fact, she had to look it up on reading this entry in the show notes, and wishes she had turned on safe search.For more on vulnerability, check out Judith Butler’s Precarious Life (2004), Martha Fineman’s “The Vulnerable Subject: Anchoring Equality in the Human Condition” (2008), Lauren Berlant’s Cruel Optimism (2011), Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor (1978) and Regarding the Pain of Others (2003), and Polly Atkin’s Some of Us Just Fall (2023).For more on the social model...
2025-07-3134 minBorders Talk: Dots, Dashes & the Stories They TellBorders and Speculative FictionSend us a MessageProphet Song by Paul Lynch is available for purchase here, at your local independent bookstore, or check out your local library. It won the Booker Prize in 2023. (Read an article by Gillian about the Booker Prize.) Booker Prize chair Esi Edugyan described it as "claustrophobic"; Lynch called it "an attempt at radical empathy."We mentioned Métis author Cherie Dimaline's novels The Marrow Thieves (2017) and Hunting by Stars (2021).We referred to the Indian Residential School system in Canada. Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their communities, and s...
2024-11-2838 minBorders Talk: Dots, Dashes & the Stories They TellWe Need to Talk About Settler Colonialism with guests Emma Battell Lowman and Adam BarkerSend us a MessageContent Note: This episode makes reference to the use of racist language/slurs.This is what a walrus sounds like (righteousness unconfirmed).“Columbus was a Dick” is a song by Princess Goes.Here’s the McMaster University Indigenous Studies programme.See the Decolonial Atlas’s map of the Six Nations Reserve.Read more about Idle No More.Emma uses Gerald Vizenor’s (Minnesota Chippewa) term “survivance.”Check out Adam and Emma's book Settler (2015) .Paulette Regan's book is Unsett...
2024-10-3155 minBorders Talk: Dots, Dashes & the Stories They TellBorder Art with guest David StirrupSend us a MessageDavid mentioned "pretendians," a term used to refer to individuals who falsely claim Indigenous heritage.David mentioned work by Eric Gansworth (Onondaga). Read more about Gansworth’s work here.Find a map of Anishinaabe territory here.Find a map of Mohawk territory here.The Jay Treaty (1794), a treaty between the United States and Great Britain (and now Canada) signed after the Revolutionary War, guarantees the rights of Indigenous people to cross the border "without hindrance." Read the Treaty here.Find a map of To...
2024-09-2643 minBorders Talk: Dots, Dashes & the Stories They TellBorders and Language with guests Olivia Hellewell and Pierre-Alexis MévelSend us a MessageLiv is the translator of The Fig Tree by Goran Vojnović, which you can order directly from the publisher Istros Books, or via our friendly local Five Leaves Bookshop. She mentions Vojnović’s (untranslated into English) first novel, Čefuli Raus.Liv wanted to share the following excerpt from The Fig Tree, connected to our conversation:"You're on the other side of the border, you two, were her first words as she came through the door.It's like someone's drawn a border through me. They've drawn borders through us, through all o...
2024-08-2954 minBorders Talk: Dots, Dashes & the Stories They TellReading and Rereading Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera with guest Stephanie LewthwaiteSend us a MessageListeners who did not share Gillian’s TV viewing habits in the 1980s and ‘90s can find the Pace salsa ad here.We make reference to not only Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: the New Mestiza but also Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro, edited by AnaLouise Keating.For more on Anzaldúa’s “doodles,” see Suzanne Bost’s “Messy Archives and Materials that Matter: Making Knowledge with the Gloria E. Anzaldúa Papers.”Read an interview between Gloria Anzaldúa and Patti Blanco here....
2024-07-2551 minBorders Talk: Dots, Dashes & the Stories They TellArriving at ArrivalSend us a MessageGillian saw Arrival at Broadway in Nottingham. Support your local independent cinema!Arrival was adapted from Ted Chiang’s novella, “Story of Your Life," which appeared in his 2002 collection Stories of Your Life and Others (Tor Books). Support your local library or independent bookseller!For more on runaway film production, see Camille Johnson-Yale’s ”’So-Called Runaway Film Production’: Countering Hollywood's Outsourcing Narrative in the Canadian Press” (paywall)Some of our favourite pieces on Arrival are:Tijana Mamula’s “Denis Villeneuve, Film Theorist; or, Cinema’s Arrival in a Multilingual Wo...
2024-06-2740 minBorders Talk: Dots, Dashes & the Stories They TellGender and Borderlands with guests Caleb Bailey and Deborah TonerSend us a MessageWe Googled “Why are dates important in History,” but fear the results may not have been peer-reviewed. For peer-reviewed sources on other matters:Information about the publication of The Routledge Companion to Gender and Borderlands can be found here: https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Gender-and-Borderlands/Feghali-Toner/p/book/9780367439590For more on Belfast, see David Coyles, Brandon Hamber, and Adrian Grant’s “Hidden Barriers and Divisive Architecture: The Role of ‘Everyday Space’ in Conflict and Peacebuilding in Belfast” (open access).For more on Berlin, see Matthew Gandy’s “Ghosts and Monsters: Reconstructing Nature on the Site...
2024-06-2756 minBorders Talk: Dots, Dashes & the Stories They TellWelcome: Connecting (Some) DotsSend us a MessageGillian would like to state for the record that Zalfa is also the real deal.In other matters:What is the plural of “impetus”?The answer, improbably, is impetuses!https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780199661350.001.0001/acref-9780199661350-e-2776 (We note that this tracks, given one acceptable plural for “ignoramus” is “ignoramuses” – a word we use Very Often Indeed these days)Find out more about David W. McFadden’s border-crossing travels in Great Lakes Suite: https://talonbooks.com/books/?great-lakes-suiteHere’s a very basic primer on British...
2024-06-2737 minBorders Talk: Dots, Dashes & the Stories They TellBorders Talk: Dots, Dashes & the Stories They Tell (trailer)Send us a MessageHosted by Border Studies academics Zalfa Feghali and Gillian Roberts, this podcast will explore border depictions and encounters in our contemporary world. Zalfa, Gillian, and their guests will discuss borders, their cultural manifestations, and their implications. In their aim to make the academic field of border studies accessible to non-specialist audiences, they will ask questions like: “What do borders look like?”, “How are borders used and mobilised in our everyday lives?”, and “What different borders can be known?” To answer these questions, they will consider current events, personal stories, and specialist...
2024-06-1101 min