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Haven’t read Delacroix’s Small Boat yet? You know what to do! Head to your local independent bookshop, or borrow a copy from your library.

Lines Drawn upon the Water is the title of a collection edited by Karl S. Hele about First Nations people in the Great Lakes borderlands.

Speaking of the Great Lakes, our favourite line of David W. McFadden’s about Lake Huron is (still) from Great Lakes Suite.

Behold the (UK) cover of Yann Martel’s 2001 novel Life of Pi. 

For more on the UK and France’s “one in, one out” deal, see this piece by Matilde Rosina.

Three-year-old Alan Kurdi and his family died in September 2015.

For information about Australia’s detention policies, see the Refugee Council of Australia’s website.

Read Kent and Syla’s piece on small island nations here. 

For a starting point to thinking about responsibility, see Robert E. Goodin’s Protecting the Vulnerable (1985) or read the UN’s Global Compact on Refugees.

The charity Care4Calais works with refugees in the UK, France, and Belgium.

The material in this podcast is for informational purposes only. The personal views expressed by the hosts and their guests on the Borders Talk podcast do not constitute an endorsement from associated organisations.

Thanks to the School of Arts, Media and Communication at the University of Leicester for the use of recording equipment, and to the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham for financial support.

Music: “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

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This episode is the first time we’ve asked each other “how are you?” Yes, we’ve checked. 

Here are two “rankings” for passports: the Henley Passport Index, which describes itself as “the only one of its kind based on exclusive data from the International Air Transport Authority (IATA)” and the Global Passport Power Rank, which at the time of recording, ranked as “equal” passports issued by Canada, the UK, and Cyprus. Eagle-eyed listeners will note this has changed. 

Thinking about the nationality/citizenship distinction, here’s an example of that slippage in the British context.

Gillian refers to C. Lynn Smith’s chapter “Is Citizenship a Gendered Concept?” in Citizenship, Diversity, and Pluralism: Canadian and Comparative Perspectives (eds Cairns et al.), 1999; and to Chelva Kanaganayakam’s chapter “Cool Dots and a Hybrid Scarborough: Multiculturalism as Canadian Myth” in Is Canada Postcolonial? Unsettling Canadian Literature(ed Moss), 2003. 

“White civility” is an important analytical tool developed by Daniel Coleman in his book of the same title, published in 2006.

We discuss “Borders” by Canadian writer Thomas King, published in 1993 in the collection One Good Story, That One and more recently republished as a comic book with illustrations by the Métis artist Natasha Donovan.

For more on the Haudenosaunee Nationals’ travelling difficulties, please see this CBC article by Ka’nhehsí:io Deer.

The material in this podcast is for informational purposes only. The personal views expressed by the hosts and their guests on the Borders Talk podcast do not constitute an endorsement from associated organisations.

Thanks to the School of Arts, Media and Communication at the University of Leicester for the use of recording equipment, and to the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham for financial support.

Music: “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

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Special thanks to our guest speakers, whose border stories we gratefully share with their consent: Jenneba Sie-Jallok,  Loraine Masiya Mponela, Ambreen Hai, and Gaura Narayan.

Gillian manages to get the name of her hometown wrong in this episode: it's Victoria, not Vancouver (which is not on Vancouver Island!).

We recorded this episode at the brilliant “Hostile Environments and Hospitable Praxes” conference, organised by Dr Rachel Gregory Fox at the University of Kent, UK, 23-24 June 2025. Thank you, Rachel! 

As we started to think about actually doing a podcast, we relied heavily on Stacey Copeland and Hannah McGregor’s A Guide to Academic Podcasting (2021).

Our amazing podcast editor is Steve Woodward, also known as The Podcasting Editor, without whom Gillian would sound like Moira Rose.

Gillian and Zalfa quote from previous episodes.

Zalfa and Gillian quote from Jacques Derrida’s Of Hospitality (translated by Rachel Bowlsby, to whom Gillian refers later in the episode). 

Zalfa quotes Tiziano Bonini’s essay “Podcasting as a Hybrid Cultural Form Between Old and New Media” and Michelle Hilmes’ essay “But Is It Radio? New Forms and Voices in the Audio Private Sphere”, from The Routledge Companion to Radio and Podcast Studies (2022).

Sara Ahmed writes about “the feminist ear.” 

Canadian poet David W. McFadden’s collection Great Lakes Suite (1997) inspired the dots and dashes of our podcast’s name [and Zalfa’s brief foray into Morse Code]. Gillian references his work in this episode, including the line “the dots and dashes [...] glistening in the waves” (p.192).

Elizabeth Povinelli’s essay, “The Governance of the Prior” (2011) 

Gillian mentions Immanuel Kant's Perpetual Peace (1795)

Mireille Rosello’s book Postcolonial Hospitality: The Immigrant as Guest (2002)

The material in this podcast is for informational purposes only. The personal views expressed by the hosts and their guests on the Borders Talk podcast do not constitute an endorsement from associated organisations.

Thanks to the School of Arts, Media and Communication at the University of Leicester for the use of recording equipment, and to the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham for financial support.

Music: “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

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The Urban Dictionary’s definition of “tsunamied” is very much not what Zalfa intended. In fact, she had to look it up on reading this entry in the show notes, and wishes she had turned on safe search.

For more on vulnerability, check out Judith Butler’s Precarious Life (2004), Martha Fineman’s “The Vulnerable Subject: Anchoring Equality in the Human Condition” (2008), Lauren Berlant’s Cruel Optimism (2011), Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor (1978) and Regarding the Pain of Others (2003), and Polly Atkin’s Some of Us Just Fall (2023).

For more on the social model of disability, read Mike Oliver’s The Politics of Disablement: A Sociological Approach (1990). Read more about the origins of the social model at the National Disability Arts Collection and Archive. 

Wayde Compton’s description of the Canada-US border as a “strait razorous border” is a pun on the Georgia Strait, a body of water interrupted by the Canada-US/British Columbia-Washington State borders. Read more in 49th Parallel Psalm.

The International Boundary Commission’s photo of the Canada-US border is very telling. As is this photo of the Mexico-US border.

The material in this podcast is for informational purposes only. The personal views expressed by the hosts and their guests on the Borders Talk podcast do not constitute an endorsement from associated organisations.

Thanks to the School of Arts, Media and Communication at the University of Leicester for the use of recording equipment, and to the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham for financial support.

Music: “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

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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 School system in Canada. Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their communities, and separated from their families, communities, and cultures in favour of a colonial "education." The 2015  Final Report of Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission described this as cultural genocide. Read the Final Report and the Calls to Action.

The westernmost point of Europe is Cape Roca, Portugal.

The surge of applications for Irish citizenship after Brexit.

The attempt to introduce mandatory military service in the UK under Rishi Sunak.

The border-crossing powers of The Sound of Music (1965) had a lasting impact on both Gillian and Zalfa.

Refugee Council resource on the "small boats" issue exercising UK politics.

Gillian briefly channels Sophia in The Golden Girls.

The Peace Arch.

Prophet Song is about families in a time of crisis. In the real world, please consider donating to Watermelon Relief, All Our Relations, or Beit El Baraka.

The material in this podcast is for informational purposes only. The personal views expressed by the hosts and their guests on the Borders Talk podcast do not constitute an endorsement from associated organisations.

Thanks to the School of Arts, Media and Communication at the University of Leicester for the use of recording equipment, and to the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham for financial support.

Music: “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

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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 book is Unsettling the Settler Within (2011).

Adam mentions an article he wrote on the War of 1812.

Listen to January Rogers’s poem “Forever."

Read more about residential school history in Canada on the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation website. On residential school denialism, see Sean Carleton and Daniel Heath Justice’s “Residential School Denialism Is an Attack on the Truth.”

Patrick Wolfe writes “Settler colonialism destroys to replace” in “Settler colonialism and the Elimination of the Native” (388).

Read more about Haudenosaunee governance here.

Thomas King’s short story “Borders” appears in One Good Story, That One: Stories (1993) and as a graphic novel (2021) illustrated by Natasha Donovan (Métis).

For more on the Haudenosaunee Lacrosse Team’s issues with border crossing, see Sid Hill’s 2015 Guardian article.

For more on treaties, British Columbia, and the Supreme Court, see, for example, the Calder case.

Alan Taylor’s War of 1812 books include The Civil War of 1812 (2010) and The Divided Ground (2006).

Eight Things you may not know about bananas, according to PBS.

The material in this podcast is for informational purposes only. The personal views expressed by the hosts and their guests on the Borders Talk podcast do not constitute an endorsement from associated organisations.

Thanks to the School of Arts, Media and Communication at the University of Leicester for the use of recording equipment, and to the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham for financial support.

Music: “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

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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 hindrance." Read the Treaty here.

Find a map of Tohono O'odham territory here. 

Maquiladoras are assembly plants for international corporations that proliferate at the US-Mexico border, especially after the North American Free Trade Agreement (1994).

Unsurprisingly, we talked about a lot of artwork:

• Alberto Caro's Border Coffins (1994): see it and read more about US-Mexico border art here.
• Ursula Biemann’s Performing the Border (1999).
• Zalfa mentioned art on billboards in Texas; they were actually in New Mexico. A series of ten billboards erected along Interstate 10 in southern New Mexico by the art organization Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND).
• Postcommodity’s Repellent Fence (2015) can be seen here.
• David mentioned Christo, who with his late wife Jeanne-Claude wrapped landmarks.
• Ana Teresa Fernández’s 2011 (and ongoing) project Borrando La Frontera (Erasing the Sky). Hear the artist speak about the project here.
• Javier Tellez’s One Flew over the Void (Bala Perdida) from 2005. You can watch it here.
• Richard Lou’s The Border Door (1988). See it and read more about it here. 
• David continues to be inspired by Alan Michelson’s Third Bank of the River (2009).
• Read more about the Two Row Wampum Belt here
• David mentioned Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas' work Copper from the Hood (2011).

The material in this podcast is for informational purposes only. The personal views expressed by the hosts and their guests on the Borders Talk podcast do not constitute an endorsement from associated organisations.

Thanks to the School of Arts, Media and Communication at the University of Leicester for the use of recording equipment, and to the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham for financial support.

Music: “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

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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 me. They've drawn borders through us, through all of us. They've drawn borders between me, my mother and my father. It's now up to someone else to decide if I can see my parents." (2020, 289)

Liv has also shared Boyd Tonkin’s review of the Fig Tree for Arts Desk (December 15, 2020), which gives quite a good bit of context about the history and the language.

Alex has been working with Impacd CIC.

You can read about Easy Language in Christiane Maaß’s open-access book, Easy Language – Plain Language – Easy Language Plus: Balancing Comprehensibility and Acceptability.

Alex discussed the politics and practice of subtitling Mathieu Kassovitz’s iconic film La Haine (1995). Apparently La Haine is 30 years old next year (eek!) – but since time is a patriarchal construct, we’re not worried about this.

Hardcore listeners may be interested in reading Alex’s work on subtitling La Haine – they can sate that appetite here.

Gillian shared the etymology of 'translation'  from the Oxford English Dictionary.

For photographic evidence of the “Thinkmetric” sign, see this photo by Matthew Redrich.

Joual is a version of Québécois French, with roots in working-class Montreal.

Find out more about the film Bye Bye Tiberias here.

Zalfa quoted from an article by Francesca Leveridge and Alex in which they argue that “subtitled films constitute hybrid spaces where languages come into contact.”

The winery Liv visited in “Borders I Have Known” was Radikon winery.

The material in this podcast is for informational purposes only. The personal views expressed by the hosts and their guests on the Borders Talk podcast do not constitute an endorsement from associated organisations.

Thanks to the School of Arts, Media and Communication at the University of Leicester for the use of recording equipment, and to the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham for financial support.

Music: “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

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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 Blanco here.

Read Paula M.L. Moya’s “Postmodernism, Realism, and the Politics of Identity: Cherríe Moraga and Chicana Feminism” here.

Steph refers to Melissa Castillo Planas’s book A Mexican State of Mind: New York City and the New Borderlands of Culture, Shelley Fisher Fishkin’s “Crossroads of Cultures: The Transnational Turn in American Studies” (paywall), and to the artists Delilah Montoya, Consuelo Jimenez Underwood, and Scherezade García.

We reference the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin.

For more on the Chicano Movement, see Valerie Mendoza’s “Chicano! A History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement” and Jessie Kratz’s “El Movimiento: The Chicano Movement and Hispanic Identity in the United States.”

For a discussion of Trump’s border wall, see Alex Guillén’s article on Politico.

For a discussion of corridos, see Celestino Fernández’s “Corridos: (Mostly) True Stories in Verse with Music.”

The material in this podcast is for informational purposes only. The personal views expressed by the hosts and their guests on the Borders Talk podcast do not constitute an endorsement from associated organisations.

Thanks to the School of Arts, Media and Communication at the University of Leicester for the use of recording equipment, and to the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham for financial support.

Music: “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com

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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 our favourite pieces on Arrival are:

• Tijana Mamula’s “Denis Villeneuve, Film Theorist; or, Cinema’s Arrival in a Multilingual World” (paywall)
• John Engle’s “Of Hopis and Heptapods: The Return of Sapir-Whorf” (paywall)
• Brett J. Esaki’s “Ted Chiang’s Asian American Amusement at Alien Arrival” (open access)
• Bran Nicol’s “Humanities Fiction: Translation and ‘Transplanetarity’ in Ted Chiang’s ‘The Story of Your Life’ and Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival” (open access)
• and the incomparable late Maureen Kincaid Speller’s “‘Recordings Alone Aren’t Sufficient—Speaking Arrival” (open access)

For a little more detail on how Arabic is written and correctly rendered on a page (or screen!), see this short primer from Northwestern University’s MENA Languages Program. 

On the passage of the Rwanda Bill:

• Zalfa quoted from Refugee Action’s article, “Rwanda Bill: We are No Longer a Safe Haven, Here’s What Everyone Needs to Know,” Refugee Action, 24 April 2024. 
• Read the Refugee and Asylum Seeker Voice (RAS Voice) response to the passage of the Safety of Rwanda Act. 
• A(n incomplete) list of things you can do to support refugees, if you are safely and securely able to do so.
• In Leicester, check out One Roof Leicester. 
• In Nottingham, check out Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum.

The material in this podcast is for informational purposes only. The personal views expressed by the hosts and their guests on the Borders Talk podcast do not constitute an endorsement from associated organisations.

Thanks to the School of Arts, Media and Communication at the University of Leicester for the use of recording equipment, and to the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham for financial support.

Music: “Corrupted” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Edited by Steve Woodward at podcastingeditor.com