COURSE DESCRIPTION AND OBJECTIVES

Welcome to 5328: Border Rhetorics! In this class, we take a rhetorical approach to studying the dividing force of borders. In relation, we discuss the historical and contemporary mis/uses, ab/uses, exploitations, and as a result, violent and unjust implications of borders over bodies deemed as unworthy, deviant others.

The transdisciplinary nature of rhetoric as a discipline informs how we understand ‘Border/Lands Rhetorics’ in this class. As a result, this class provides a solid overview of Border and Borderlands studies in a transdisciplinary setting. We will consider various relations between borders, borderlands, and bodies such as culture, identity, language, violence, mobility, gender, sexuality, technology/design, art, social justice, and activism. The central question that will guide us as we unpack these layers is how we define, understand, engage with, respond to, and experience borders and borderlands. We will consider the social, cultural, and political implications of borders while we also reflect on all those in/visible borders and boundaries we confront and cross every day. 

Our overall goal is to start forming an embodied form of border/land thinking as we study post-colonial, decolonial, and feminist approaches, and methods/methodologies. Through this emerging border/land thinking, our objective is to question and challenge the underlying colonial imagination continuing to re-invent the borders as a means of power, control, and oppression.