Online Seminar Series 2021 / 2022

 

The seminar puts a spotlight on exciting new research that brings sustained conceptual, analytical, and historical attention to the causes and consequences of constructing (or reconstructing) barriers and borders.

Each seminar consists of a conversation between two scholars. The seminar will take place online via Zoom. Please register below for the link. The introductions to the books discussed in this seminar will be pre-circulated among registered participants.

Audio recordings of the events will be posted shortly after each event.

 

Thursday, October 7, 2021

Border-Making: State-Building and Geopolitics
           
9 am PDT (San Francisco), 12pm EST (New York), 5pm BST (London), 6pm CEST (Paris)

Thomas Simpson (University of Cambridge)
The Frontier in British India: Space, Science, and Power in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2021)

Sören Urbansky (German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.)
Beyond the Steppe Frontier: A History of the Sino-Russian Border (Princeton University Press, 2020)

Moderators: Franziska Exeler (Cambridge/FU Berlin) and Kalyani Ramnath (Harvard)

Audio recording »

 

 

Thursday, January 20, 2022         

Creating Barriers: Migration, Citizenship, and the Politics of Inclusion & Exclusion

 8 am PST (San Francisco), 11am EST (New York), 4pm GMT (London), 5pm CET (Paris)

 Noora Lori (Boston University)
Offshore Citizens: Permanent “Temporary” Status in the Gulf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019)

 Robtel Neajai Pailey (London School of Economics)
Development, (Dual) Citizenship and Its Discontents in Africa. The Political Economy of Belonging to Liberia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021)

Moderators: Franziska Exeler (Cambridge/FU Berlin) and Kalyani Ramnath (Harvard)

 

 

Thursday, February 3, 2022           

Crossing Borders: Migration, Law, and Global Politics

9 am PST (San Francisco), 12pm EST (New York), 5pm GMT (London), 6pm CET (Paris)

Mae Ngai (Columbia University)
The Chinese Question. The Gold Rushes and Global Politics (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2021)

Ian Sanjay Patel (London School of Economics)
We’re Here Because You Were There: Immigration and the End of Empire (London: Verso Books, 2021)

Moderators: Franziska Exeler (Cambridge/FU Berlin) and Kalyani Ramnath (Harvard)

Audio recording »

 

 

Thursday, April 7, 2022                  

The Lived Experience of Borderlands: Border Regimes, Social Communities, and the Environment

9 am PDT (San Francisco), 12pm EST (New York), 5pm BST (London), 6pm CEST (Paris)

Astrid M. Eckert (Emory University)
West Germany and the Iron Curtain: Environment, Economy, and Culture in the Borderlands (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019)

Rihan Yeh (University of California San Diego)
Passing: Two Publics in a Mexican Border City (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2018)

Moderators: Franziska Exeler (Cambridge/FU Berlin) and Kalyani Ramnath (Harvard)

Register »