Field Trip to MUDAM Luxemburg for “Riverine Borders: On Rivers and Other Border Materialities”

On May 20, students from Trier and Saarland universities, along with representatives of the UniGR-Center for Border Studies/Uni Luxemburg, attended the one-day symposium on “Riverine Borders” at MUDAM in Luxemburg. The symposium represented a cooperative effort between these institutions and allowed students to explore issues of borders, border studies, border stories, and more in the context of their first academic conference experience. Students of the Master-level class “North American Borderlands” joined the symposium from Trier to meet their peers from Saarland university under the guidance of Prof. Astrid Fellner as well as Dr. Christian Wille from UniGR-CBS.

The symposium brought together scholars, students, artists, activists, and curators from North America and Europe to explore the river as a material, political border, as well as the symbolic implications of such borders.

The symposium took place in the context of Zoe Leonard’s photo exhibition “Al Río/To the River” at MUDAM which documents the US-Mexico border and, therefore, is of utmost importance to students of North American Studies. At the same time, “Riverine Borders” provided a space to present the transnational student project on “Borderland Stories” between Saarland and Ukraine.

“Riverine Borders” was preceded by a three-part online lecture series from March to May 2022, again organized by the universities of Trier and Saarland and the UniGr-Center for Border Studies, highlighting work on the French-Brazilian borderland (Fabio Santos), linguistic and symbolic borderlands in the context of immigration to the US (Ana Elisa Gomez Laris), and border crossings through mestizaje (Carlos Morton).

The work on and around “Riverine Borders” is an excellent example of the cooperation in the Greater Region, and we are grateful to our partners for getting us involved with such enthusiasm.

Riverine Borders at MUDAM: https://www.mudam.com/de/veranstaltungen/symposium-riverine-borders-on-rivers-and-other-border-materialities

Recorded Livestream: mudam.com/stream-riverine-borders

Zoe Leonard at MUDAM: https://www.mudam.com/de/ausstellungen/al-rio-to-the-river

Field Trip to MUDAM Luxembourg
Copyright: Julia Schwarzmeier