How is it that walls, borders, boundariesand their material and symbolic architectures of division and exclusionengender their very opposite? This edited volume explores the crossings, permeations, and constructions of cultural and political borders between peoples and territories, examining how walls, borders, and boundaries signify both interdependence and contact within sites of conflict and separation. Topics addressed range from the geopolitics of Europes historical and contemporary city walls to conceptual reflections on the intersection of human rights and separating walls, the memory politics generated in historically disputed border areas, theatrical explorations of border crossings, and the mapping of boundaries within migrant communities.
Marc Silbermanis Professor of German and Affiliate Professor in Theatre and Drama as well as Film Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has published extensively on twentieth and twenty-first century German literature, film, and theater.
Karen E. Tillis Lecturer of Cultural Geography at the National University of Ireland Maynooth and co-convener of the Mapping Spectral Traces international network. She is author ofThe New Berlin, co-editor ofTextures of Place, and working on a book project,Wounded Cities.
Janet Wardis Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma and author ofPost-Wall Berlin: Borders, Space and IdentityandWeimar Surfaces: Urban Visual Culture in 1920s Germany. Her current work includes a co-edited collection on (trans)nationalism and the German city, and a book project on urban destruction and reconstruction.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction:Walls, Borders, Boundaries
Marc Silberman, Karen E. Till, and Janet Ward
PART I: CITY WALLS
Chapter 1.The DialectilÃØ