Walls, Borders, Boundaries: Spatial and Cultural Practices in Europe (Spektrum: Publications of the German Studies Association)

How is it that walls, borders, boundaries―and their material and symbolic architectures of division and exclusion―engender 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 Europe’s 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 Silberman is 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. Till is Lecturer of Cultural Geography at the National University of Ireland Maynooth and co-convener of the ‘Mapping Spectral Traces’ international network. She is author of The New Berlin, co-editor of Textures of Place, and working on a book project, Wounded Cities.

Janet Ward is Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma and author of Post-Wall Berlin: Borders, Space and Identity and Weimar 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.