Borders, Surveillance, Rights

This interdisciplinary course grapples with the relationship between borders, surveillance, power and rights, critically examining the ways in which lines, boundaries, and caesuras are drawn among geographical entities, communities, identities, environments, and ultimately, social relations – demarcating self and other, establishing hierarchical relationships and activating infrastructures of violence. This seminar explores the dynamics, contradictions and politics surrounding borders and surveillance, and borrows from the fields of film, architecture, art and urban studies to explore the effect on access to and formulations of human rights. To this end, we engage notions of biopolitics, racialization, exclusion/exception, necropolitics, coloniality, hospitality and securitization, among others. The course also engages visual and spatial methodologies and maps out everyday practices of resistance that seek to challenge, subvert or collapse the multifaceted violence of borders.

Taken together, this course provides an alternative to conventional scholarship on this subject. It engages with and provides an alternative to the mainstream literature to take for granted the inclusive and integrative character of nation-states. At first glance, the course may appear highly theoretical, but not to worry—we will move slowly through the texts and concepts together. The instructor will also ensure that we apply the ideas discussed in class to concrete and tangible case studies with examples given to enable easier access and collective learning.