Borderlands Between East and West

This program is co-sponsored by the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures.

Are borderlands just transit spaces of goods and people, or meeting places of stories and cultures?

By shifting our perspective from geopolitics to the local level, this program explores what it means to be displaced in a foreign country, surrounded by an incomprehensible language, and compelled to adapt to a new lifestyle. Focusing on the powerful impact of storytelling, we will visit Ukrainian refugee centers both in Warsaw and in Bucharest, engaging with the people who count on the world’s help but also express their agency, sharing their stories of living at borderlands. We will compare their testimonials with the news stories and the grand narratives of international political pundits in order to shed light on the interwoven realities and transnational histories of people moving across borders. At the Eastern gateways of the European Union, we will examine cultural diversity, developing a “relational narrative” that brings conflicting voices together into a shared space where the meaning of the self resonates with the meaning of the others. We will delve into local histories while we visit museums, tour the former Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw and the surviving buildings of the Jewish District in Bucharest, and take trips to Krakow and Gdansk in Poland, and to Bran, Brașov, and Constanța in Romania. From the Baltic Sea port of Gdansk to the Black Sea port of Constanța, we will explore the edges of the old continent, complementing our cultural immersion with on-site lectures, film screenings, literary and academic readings, and direct dialogues with scholars, artists, and volunteers.

Our exposure to Europe’s borderlands as well as to the “collective memory of borderland populations” (Wastl-Walter) will make us aware of the values and cultural practices that transcend national borders, and the importance of storytelling in reconfiguring dislocated cultures.