Borders Talk: Dots, Dashes & the Stories They Tell

By: Zalfa Feghali and Gillian Roberts
  • Summary

  • Hosted by Border Studies academics Zalfa Feghali and Gillian Roberts, this podcast explores border depictions and encounters in our contemporary world.

    Zalfa, Gillian, and their guests 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 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 consider current events, personal stories, and specialist academic texts, as well as exploring and reflecting on “classic” texts of Border Studies.


    © 2024 Borders Talk: Dots, Dashes & the Stories They Tell
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Episodes
  • "We Need to Talk About Settler Colonialism" with guests Emma Battell Lowman and Adam Barker
    Oct 31 2024

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    Content 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 Unsettling the Settler Within (2011).

    Adam mentions an article he wrote on the War of 1812.

    Listen to January Roberts’ poem “Forever."

    Read more about residential school history in Canada on the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation website. On residential school denialism, see Sean Carleton and Daniel Heath Justice’s “Residential School Denialism Is an Attack on the Truth.”

    Patrick Wolfe writes “Settler colonialism destroys to replace” in “Settler colonialism and the Elimination of the Native” (388).

    Read more about Haudenosaunee governance here.

    Thomas King’s short story “Borders” appears in One Good Story, That One: Stories (1993) and as a graphic novel (2021) illustrated by Natasha Donovan (Métis).

    For more on the Haudenosaunee Lacrosse Team’s issues with border crossing, see Sid Hill’s 2015 Guardian article.

    For more on treaties, British Columbia, and the Supreme Court, see, for example, the Calder case.

    Alan Taylor’s War of 1812 books include The Civil War of 1812 (2010) and The Divided Ground (2006).

    The material in this podcast is for informational purposes only. The personal views expressed by the hosts and their guests on the Borders Talk podcast do not constitute an endorsement from associated organisations.

    Thanks to the University of Leicester's School of Arts, Media and Communication for use of recording equipment; to India Downton for her invaluable expertise; and to the Foundation for Canadian Studies in the UK and the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham for financial support.

    Music: “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

    Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

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    56 mins
  • "Border Art" with guest David Stirrup
    Sep 26 2024

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    David 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 Tohono O'odham territory here.

    Maquiladoras are assembly plants for international corporations that proliferate at the US-Mexico border, especially after the North American Free Trade Agreement (1994).

    Unsurprisingly, we talked about a lot of artwork:

    • Alberto Caro's Border Coffins (1994): see it and read more about US-Mexico border art here.
    • Ursula Biemann’s Performing the Border (1999).
    • Zalfa mentioned art on billboards in Texas; they were actually in New Mexico. A series of ten billboards erected along Interstate 10 in southern New Mexico by the art organization Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND).
    • Postcommodity’s Repellent Fence (2015) can be seen here.
    • David mentioned Christo, who with his late wife Jeanne-Claude wrapped landmarks.
    • Ana Teresa Fernández’s 2011 (and ongoing) project Borrando La Frontera (Erasing the Sky). Hear the artist speak about the project here.
    • Javier Tellez’s One Flew over the Void (Bala Perdida) from 2005. You can watch it here.
    • Richard Lou’s The Border Door (1988). See it and read more about it here.
    • David continues to be inspired by Alan Michelson’s Third Bank of the River (2009).
    • Read more about the Two Row Wampum Belt here
    • David mentioned Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas' work

    The material in this podcast is for informational purposes only. The personal views expressed by the hosts and their guests on the Borders Talk podcast do not constitute an endorsement from associated organisations.

    Thanks to the University of Leicester's School of Arts, Media and Communication for use of recording equipment; to India Downton for her invaluable expertise; and to the Foundation for Canadian Studies in the UK and the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham for financial support.

    Music: “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

    Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

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    44 mins
  • "Borders and Language" with guests Olivia Hellewell and Pierre-Alexis Mével
    Aug 29 2024

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    Liv 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 of us. They've drawn borders between me, my mother and my father. It's now up to someone else to decide if I can see my parents." (2020, 289)

    Liv has also shared Boyd Tonkin’s review of the Fig Tree for Arts Desk (December 15, 2020), which gives quite a good bit of context about the history and the language.

    Alex has been working with Impacd CIC.

    You can read about Easy Language in Christiane Maaß’s open-access book, Easy Language – Plain Language – Easy Language Plus: Balancing Comprehensibility and Acceptability.

    Alex discussed the politics and practice of subtitling Mathieu Kassovitz’s iconic film La Haine (1995). Apparently La Haine is 30 years old next year (eek!) – but since time is a patriarchal construct, we’re not worried about this.

    Hardcore listeners may be interested in reading Alex’s work on subtitling La Haine – they can sate that appetite here.

    Gillian shared the etymology of 'translation' from the Oxford English Dictionary.

    For photographic evidence of the “Thinkmetric” sign, see this photo by Matthew Redrich.

    Joual is a version of Québécois French, with roots in working-class Montreal.

    Find out more about the film Bye Bye Tiberias here.

    Zalfa quoted from an article by Francesca Leveridge and Alex in which they argue that “subtitled films constitute hybrid spaces where languages come into contact.”

    The winery Liv visited in “Borders I Have Known” was Radikon winery.

    The material in this podcast is for informational purposes only. The personal views expressed by the hosts and their guests on the Borders Talk podcast do not constitute an endorsement from associated organisations.

    Thanks to the University of Leicester's School of Arts, Media and Communication for use of recording equipment; to India Downton for her invaluable expertise; and to the Foundation for Canadian Studies in the UK and the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham for financial support.

    Music: “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

    Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

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    55 mins

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