Borders Talk: Dots, Dashes & the Stories They Tell

Zalfa Feghali and Gillian Roberts•borders-talk.buzzsprout.com

Hosted by Border Studies academics Zalfa Feghali and Gillian Roberts, this podcast explores border depictions and encounters in our contemporary world.

Zalfa, Gillian, and their guests discuss borders, their cultural manifestations, and their implications. In their aim to make the academic field of border studies accessible to non-specialist audiences, they ask questions like: “What do borders look like?”, “How are borders used and mobilised in our everyday lives?”, and “What different borders can be known?”

To answer these questions, they consider current events, personal stories, and specialist academic texts, as well as exploring and reflecting on “classic” texts of Border Studies.

Last refreshed: July 24th, 2025 at 12:08 PM ⓘ

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Episodes

Borders and Speculative Fiction

Send us a Message Prophet Song by Paul Lynch is available for purchase here , at your local independent bookstore, or check out your local library. It won the Booker Prize in 2023 . (Read an article by Gillian about the Booker Prize .) Booker Prize chair Esi Edugyan described it as " claustrophobic "; Lynch called it " an attempt at radical empathy ." We mentioned Métis author Cherie Dimaline's novels The Marrow Thieves (2017) and Hunting by Stars (2021). We referred to the Indian Residential Sc...

Nov 28, 2024•39 min•Season 1Ep. 8

We Need to Talk About Settler Colonialism with guests Emma Battell Lowman and Adam Barker

Send us a Message Content Note: This episode makes reference to the use of racist language/slurs. This is what a walrus sounds like (righteousness unconfirmed). “Columbus was a Dick” is a song by Princess Goes. Here’s the McMaster University Indigenous Studies programme . See the Decolonial Atlas’s map of the Six Nations Reserve . Read more about Idle No More . Emma uses Gerald Vizenor’s (Minnesota Chippewa) term “ survivance .” Check out Adam and Emma's book Settler (2015) . Paulette Regan's bo...

Oct 31, 2024•56 min•Season 1Ep. 7

Border Art with guest David Stirrup

Send us a Message David mentioned "pretendians," a term used to refer to individuals who falsely claim Indigenous heritage. David mentioned work by Eric Gansworth (Onondaga). Read more about Gansworth’s work here . Find a map of Anishinaabe territory here . Find a map of Mohawk territory here . The Jay Treaty (1794), a treaty between the United States and Great Britain (and now Canada) signed after the Revolutionary War, guarantees the rights of Indigenous people to cross the border "without hin...

Sep 26, 2024•44 min•Season 1Ep. 6

Borders and Language with guests Olivia Hellewell and Pierre-Alexis Mével

Send us a Message Liv is the translator of The Fig Tree by Goran Vojnović , which you can order directly from the publisher Istros Books, or via our friendly local Five Leaves Bookshop. She mentions Vojnović’s (untranslated into English) first novel, Čefuli Raus. Liv wanted to share the following excerpt from The Fig Tree, connected to our conversation: "You're on the other side of the border, you two, were her first words as she came through the door. It's like someone's drawn a border through ...

Aug 29, 2024•55 min•Season 1Ep. 5

Reading and Rereading Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera with guest Stephanie Lewthwaite

Send us a Message Listeners who did not share Gillian’s TV viewing habits in the 1980s and ‘90s can find the Pace salsa ad here . We make reference to not only Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera: the New Mestiza but also Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro , edited by AnaLouise Keating . For more on Anzaldúa’s “doodles,” see Suzanne Bost ’s “ Messy Archives and Materials that Matter: Making Knowledge with the Gloria E. Anzaldúa Papers .” Read an interview between Gloria Anzaldúa and Patti ...

Jul 25, 2024•51 min•Season 1Ep. 4

Arriving at Arrival

Send us a Message Gillian saw Arrival at Broadway in Nottingham. Support your local independent cinema! Arrival was adapted from Ted Chiang’s novella, “Story of Your Life," which appeared in his 2002 collection Stories of Your Life and Others (Tor Books). Support your local library or independent bookseller! For more on runaway film production, see Camille Johnson-Yale’s ”’So-Called Runaway Film Production’: Countering Hollywood's Outsourcing Narrative in the Canadian Press ” (paywall) Some of o...

Jun 27, 2024•40 min•Season 1Ep. 3

Gender and Borderlands with guests Caleb Bailey and Deborah Toner

Send us a Message We Googled “Why are dates important in History,” but fear the results may not have been peer-reviewed. For peer-reviewed sources on other matters: Information about the publication of The Routledge Companion to Gender and Borderlands can be found here: https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Gender-and-Borderlands/Feghali-Toner/p/book/9780367439590 For more on Belfast, see David Coyles, Brandon Hamber, and Adrian Grant’s “Hidden Barriers and Divisive Architecture: ...

Jun 27, 2024•57 min•Season 1Ep. 2

Welcome: Connecting (Some) Dots

Send us a Message Gillian would like to state for the record that Zalfa is also the real deal. In other matters: What is the plural of “impetus”? The answer, improbably, is impetuses! https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780199661350.001.0001/acref-9780199661350-e-2776 (We note that this tracks, given one acceptable plural for “ignoramus” is “ignoramuses” – a word we use Very Often Indeed these days) Find out more about David W. McFadden’s border-crossing travels in Great Lakes...

Jun 27, 2024•38 min•Season 1Ep. 1

Borders Talk: Dots, Dashes & the Stories They Tell (trailer)

Send us a Message Hosted by Border Studies academics Zalfa Feghali and Gillian Roberts, this podcast will explore border depictions and encounters in our contemporary world. Zalfa, Gillian, and their guests will discuss borders, their cultural manifestations, and their implications. In their aim to make the academic field of border studies accessible to non-specialist audiences, they will ask questions like: “What do borders look like?”, “How are borders used and mobilised in our everyday lives?...

Jun 11, 2024•2 min

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