Following the recent success of the interdisciplinary conference on 'Borders', held at the University of Kent in May 2016, Skepsi are calling for contributions on the same theme to a future issue to be published summer 2017.
Thor Heyerdahl, widely known for his Kon-Tiki expedition, is said to have once remarked, 'Borders? I have never seen one, but I have heard that they exist in the mind of some people'. Arguably, Heyerdahl might be mistaken for questioning the existence of borders, yet his statement nonetheless draws attention to some highly interesting and controversial questions: What exactly are borders and on what necessary, legal and ethical grounds do we build them and where? These questions seem particularly relevant today, as the European Union is facing the so-called migrant 'crisis', and with Daesh's auto-proclamation of an Islamic State. It is, thus, not surprising that academic interest in borders is on the increase. Over the last decades the topic has been developing into a new interdisciplinary field of research drawing together scholars from the social sciences and humanities. Border studies notably look at the historical, anthropological, sociological, and geopolitical aspects of borders 'in the quest to understand the changing nature of territory, power, governance, and identity within both national and more global frames of reference'. (Wilson & Donnan: 2021).
Topics may include but are not limited to:
- European Borders and the Refugee Crisis
- Shifting Borders, Territory and Partition
- The Frontier
- Security and Conflict
- Globalisation vs. National State
- Colonialism and New Imperialism
- Mobility, Migration and Multicultural Societies
- Borders and (national/sexual/racial) Identity
- Performativity
- Crossing Borders
- The Impact of Borders on Literature and their Literary Representation
- The Representation of Borders in the Arts
- Borders and Language(s)
- Physical Boundaries and the Self
- Psychological Aspects of Borders and Boundaries
Submissions are invited from academic staff, postgraduate students and independent scholars. Articles will be selected by the Board after peer review and published in a forthcoming issue of the journal, to be published in summer 2017. Articles, which should not exceed 5,000 words, should be sent together with an abstract of about 250 words and brief biographical details about the author to: skepsi@kent.ac.uk
The deadline for submission is 31 October 2016.
Skepsi is an online interdisciplinary peer reviewed research journal, now in its ninth year, run by postgraduate students from the School of European Culture and Languages. It is funded by the University of Kent.