Borderlands: postcolonial formations of connection and separation

‘Borders. Everything begins with them, and all paths lead back to them. They are no longer merely a line of demarcation separating distinct sovereign entities. Increasingly, they are the name used to describe the organized violence that underpins both contemporary capitalism and our world order in general – the women, the men, and the unwanted children condemned to abandonment […] In fact, everything leads back to borders – these dead spaces of non-connection which deny the very idea of a shared humanity, of a planet, the only one we have, that we share together, and to which we are linked by the ephemerality of our common condition.’ - Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics

What forms do borders take in the twenty-first century? What does it mean to cross, resist, or dismantle the border? What is the relationship between decolonisation and border politics? How do borders impact upon our everyday? This collaborative event approaches the prominent theme of the border as a conceptual site with a diverse array of interdisciplinary meanings and interpretations within postcolonial studies and across the arts and humanities more broadly. We seek to gather researchers from a wide range of disciplines to examine the spatial, technological, and political formations of the border at the intersection of postcolonial studies, political philosophy, feminist theory, literary and linguistic studies, critical environmental and medical humanities, and beyond.

We are pleased to invite proposals for papers (duration: 20 minutes) for panel sessions on the
following topics:

• Decolonisation
• Gender studies
• Imaginaries of the border
• Environmental borders
• Digital humanities and technology
• International labour and migration
• Care and domestic work
• Globalisation and neoliberalism
• Conflict
• Feminist and queer border crossings
• Epistemic injustice
• Humanitarian border formations
• The camp
• Postnational theory
• Political community
• Disability studies
• Linguistic/Translation studies
• Liminality
• Intersectionality
• Hybridisation
• Genre

The suggested topics may be interpreted widely and are intended to encompass a broad range of fields within the arts and humanities. Please provide a short abstract (250-300 words), bearing in mind that we intend to reach an audience made up of both specialists and non-specialists, and a short biographical paragraph.

Deadline for submissions: 11 February 2022, please apply through this form. We will inform you of the outcome of your submission by early March 2022.

Conference in early June 2022 at the University of Leeds.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in contact!

Organisers: Isla Paterson (i.m.paterson@leeds.ac.uk), Evie Lewis (enel@leeds.ac.uk), and Rebecca Bevington (rb1371@york.ac.uk).