SHUM 6690

Borders, Frontiers, and Walls in Global History

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2023-2024.

Frontiers and borders are at the heart of our international system. From the Great Wall of China to Donald Trump's plans to build wall along the US-Mexico border, frontiers have always been invested with strategic and symbolic importance. Even today, when boundaries of all kinds are transcended by global networks, borders remain powerful. Borders, walls, and fences have also had a tremendous symbolic significance throughout time. We will survey a variety of historiographical texts, spanning regions across the globe to find out how historians have been making sense of borders – how they have explored what borders mean to people and states, how borders define places, and what frontiers can reveal about larger processes of migration, state- formation, and governance.

When Offered Spring.

Permission Note Enrollment limited to: graduate students.

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