INTRODUCTION Culture, Politics, and the Canada-US Border
INTRODUCTION Culture, Politics, and the Canada-US Border

Summary/Abstract: In this thematic issue of RIAS, we address a number of issues about the border, drawing on perspectives from multiple disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, from anthropology to political science, economics, and literature, and including the works of scholars based in Canada, the US, and Germany. Their works engage issues of Indigeneity, African-descendant populations, Franco-Canadians, Gender and Race, Colonialisms, and the more-than-human world. Topics include hunting, cross-border Indigenous relations, treaties, oil protests, immigration, domestic workers, historical memory, creative fiction, and the notions of borders as textures, zones, lines, connections, and cultural imaginaries. Our emphasis on combining social science and humanities approaches is essential to this work. Much previous work on the Canada-US border has tended to focus either on political/legal issues or on literary/media studies. Instead, we strive instead to bring multiple disciplinary perspectives into conversation and include artistic/visual work. This volume thus contributes to a broader project than one that would center on nationalist interests—either the US or Canada’s—and rather brings 45 Jasmin Habib University of Waterloo, Canada Jane Desmond University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA to the study of bordering practices and border theory a continental approach, one that attends to the places and spaces that are and/or become the border.

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