Borderwork(s) Professor Robin Kirk has published a “Letter from Belfast” in the Autumn 2011 issue of The American Scholar.
Thoughts/comments on what you read? Email Professor Kirk.
Congratulations, Robin!
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Borderwork(s) Professor Robin Kirk has published a “Letter from Belfast” in the Autumn 2011 issue of The American Scholar.
Thoughts/comments on what you read? Email Professor Kirk.
Congratulations, Robin!
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BorderWork(s) continues to grow! Check out these courses which are now affiliated with the BorderWork(s) Lab:
We’re offering 3 independent or group studies in the fall of 2011. If you are an undergrad interested in taking a full-credit course in BorderWork(s), please write us! The contact information is on each of the courses, included in the tab on independent and group studies.Students may be able to turn their projects into honors theses or even publications, including on the Web — so if you are interested, sign up!
You’ll need a permission number to register.
We’re also interested in talking to graduates students and faculty interested in BorderWork(s) — write us at rights@duke.edu.
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We are working on our courses and independent studies for the fall of 2011 — the Open House will be on March 28 at 5:15 pm in the Garage (Bay 4) at Smith Warehouse. As we worked today, we were inspired by this clip, shared by colleague Erika Weinthal…
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BorderWork(s) draws together critical perspectives from the humanities, social sciences, and policy studies to explore the acts of division and demarcation — representational and material, symbolic, political-economic and cultural — that have parceled up the inhabited world into bounded communities that arrest, interrupt and/or redirect the free flow of humanity, goods, ideas, images, indeed imagination itself. In this Lab, we will investigate the human consequences of cartographic divisions (broadly conceived) and the materialization of these divisions in wall-building, both literal and virtual. Whenever frontiers change or disappear altogether, human security is affected, usually negatively. Borders that restrict human movement can prevent farmers from reaching their land or drawing water; Internet firewalls can silence reports of human rights violations; genocide can force refugees from their homelands; the walls in Belfast both perpetuate segregation and make a tentative peace possible; and massive development projects such as dam construction can wreak environmental damage across borders as well as cause forced human relocations within borders. The Lab will have specific sites of inquiry, including borders between Israel and the Occupied Territories; India, Pakistan and Bangladesh; within Northern Ireland; and between China and Tibet, among others.
BorderWork(s) is led by Claudia Koonz (History), Phil Stern (History) and Erika Weinthal (Nicholas School), with additional core faculty, including Robin Kirk (Duke Human Rights Center/International Comparative Studies), Ralph Litzinger (Cultural Anthropology) and Sumathi Ramaswamy (History). The Lab will also include other faculty with related interests as well as graduate and undergraduates.
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