Ever wonder about the US-Canada divide? Heres your chance to find out more. Come join us on Wednesday, November 12! JMC Current Issues Seminar # 4 Dr. Markus Heide, Senior Lecturer, Department of English, Swedish Institute for North American Studies, Uppsala University, Sweden, Border Film and the US-Canada Divide Time: Wednesday, November 12, 2014 at 14:15-15:45 Place: University of Turku, Minerva Building, Seminar Room 223 (Kaivokatu 12) The 3800-mile boundary separating the US and Canada is not only the world’s longest border between two countries but it was for a long time also described as the world’s longest undefended border. However, after the attacks of September 11, 2001, it has been rebranded as the world’s longest secure border (e.g., only about 3% of undocumented immigrants enter the US through Canada, and trafficking is a minor issue compared to other large national borders). The border fulfills its functions of securing national distinction in different ways, both literally and figuratively, north and south of the 49th parallel. As a material and institutional line it contributes to claiming and maintaining sovereignty of two nation states; in ways of symbolic communication it serves as a trope for marking cultural difference and national self-confidence. Both functions – sovereignty and national identity of the US and Canada – have been affected by the War on Terror and the new surveillance politics of the past decade. The lecture will discuss how these changes are reflected in Canadian (and American) cinema and TV drama that have an emphasis on questions of location and that can be seen as contributing to the genre of “Border Film”. Dr. Markus Heide is Senior Lecturer of American Studies at the Swedish Institute of North American Studies at the Department of English, Uppsala University, Sweden. He has worked as Assistant Professor at Humboldt University of Berlin and at the University of Munich. In 2007, he was a Fulbright Visiting Research Fellow at Harvard University and in 2008 and 2010 a Postdoctoral Fellow at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. His publications include a monograph on cultural contact in Chicano/a narrative (Grenzüberschreibungen: Chicano/a-Erzählliteratur und die Inszenierung von Kulturkontakt, Heidelberg: Winter, 2004). He has also co-authored a book on the history of Canadian film (Kanadischer Film: Geschichte, Themen, Tendenzen, Konstanz: Universitätsverlag Konstanz, 2006) and is the co-editor of The Americas in the Nineteenth Century: Inter-American Perspectives on U.S. Literature, a special edition of American Studies/Amerikastudien (2008). He is the head of an international research group with a focus on border film and transnationalism. The seminar is co-organized with the International Institute for Popular Culture (IIPC), University of Turku. It is free and open to the public. Welcome!
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 17:08:09 +0000
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