Borderlands

Studies Center

The Center has been established

by a team of researchers: Professor Grazyna Zygadlo and Dr. Marek Wojtaszek

from the Department of American Studies and Mass Media, Faculty of

International and Political Studies, University of Lodz, Poland. The Center is committed

to promoting and advancing interdisciplinary research of the contemporary

borderland territories of various kinds and nature. Its mission will be to

coordinate transdomain connections that bring together the humanities, social

sciences and the arts into a powerful synergy of research, creative expression

and innovation, thus animating and facilitating scholarly dialogue, and communication

between academics, artists and students from all over the world. Pioneering in

the Polish context, the Center will also invite and foster digital

communication and scholarship, as well as performance and exhibition, thereby

enabling greater public engagement and outreach, and facilitating knowledge

transfer to new generations of students and researchers.

Focus of studies:

Inter-, transdisciplinary

and transversal research into borderlands, which addresses, but is not limited

to, such areas and problems as:

• theories and methodologies of borderlands and the in-between liminal spaces (e.g. frontiers, boundaries, peripheries, thresholds, sites of passing, zones of intensive contact);
• cartographies of demarcation, separation and seclusion, as well as inclusion and integration (e.g. urban, cultural, social, psychological, corporeal);
• border as a specific social and political space (formation of national and regional identities; emerging and escalating conflicts and their resolution, nationalism and transnationalism; border crossing, mobility and migration);
• symbolic borders (e.g. communication at/through/over the borders, representation of borderlands – cinematic, theatrical, literary);
• cultural geographies and spatialities of borderlands (e.g. processes of ex-/extra-/de-/re-territorialization, limits, interstices, intervals);
• ecologies of mobility, passing/crossing and being stuck, and (non)belonging;
• aesthetics of liminality (e.g., ruins, margins, finalities, non-normativities, disabilities);
• artistic expressions and interventions (e.g., architectures, designs, visual cultures).

Goals and activities:

• Conducting scientific research and publishing the outcomes;
• Applying for grants and other sponsorship of academic activities to local and international science funding bodies;
• Organization of thematic workshops, expert panels, and conferences;
• Developing teaching curriculum (courses, seminars) in the area of borderland studies, and didactically contributing to the programs taught at the Faculty;

Building a platform

for interinstitutional dialogue, discussion and exchange of knowledge for

academics, students, and artists interested in the subject of borderlands.

Activity:

 

On 22 February 2025, Dr. David Schrag delivered an online lecture: “In Their Death Throes. The Necroculture of Arms Trafficking and Human Smuggling on US-Mexican Border”, looking into the militarization process of US-Mexican border and focusing on the Texan border town of Laredo on Rio Grande. Prof. Scharg works in the Center for Global Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and his research interests combine cultural anthropology and international studies. He has published on prison education and American gun culture. In February, he joined a residency program at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. The event was co-organized by the University of Lodz Borderland Studies Center and Political Critique in Warsaw.