The present volume brings together selected proceedings of the 2005 Cleveland State University Symposium “Crossing Over: Learning to Navigate the Borderlands of Intercultural Encounters.” The collection of essays offers some samples of the complex and potentially infinite array of investigations that the newly expanded field of ‘Border Studies’ can add to the academy’s scholarly enterprise. The articles collected in this volume demonstrate innovative approaches to comparative explorations of topics in American, Latin-American, European, and Post-Colonial literature as well as Linguistics, History and Education.

The essays presented in this volume are a peer-reviewed selection of some of the best papers presented during the 3rd Crossing Over Symposium at Cleveland State University from October 9–11, 2009. Scholars from the United States, Canada, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, India, Israel, and the United Kingdom came together to examine border experiences from different points of view. Originally the organizers called upon a diversity of borderland possibilities for this conference: cultural, political, educational, religious, international, intranational, linguistic, gender, ideological, age, tribal, social class/caste, identity, and neighborhoods. The definition of borderland was not limited to territorial spaces, but rather was open to any kind of confrontation/encounter affecting different situations of our lives. The call for this conference was interdisciplinary in nature, and its intent was to open a discussion between the humanities and the social sciences on the dynamic issue of borders.

The Roma are Europe's largest minority, and yet they remain one of the most misunderstood and underrepresented. Scholarship on the Roma in German-speaking countries has focused mostly on the portrayal of ?Zigeuner/Gypsies? in literature by non-Roma and on persecution during the Nazi period. Rarely have scholars examined the actual voices of Roma to glean their perspectives on their social interactions and customs. Without such studies the Roma appear passive in the face of their long and troubled history. With a basis in theories of intersectionality, subalternity, and cultural hybridity, Roma Voices in the German-Speaking World rectifies this image of passivity by analyzing autobiographies, folktales, and novels by Roma, thereby promoting a better understanding of the multifaceted and multifarious cultures alive today in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. In documenting their voices, Roma writers unveil the large extent to which their personal lives, their social interactions with other Roma and non-Roma, and the images they project of their values and traditions are highly influenced by gender and ethnicity. Anthropological and historical studies have frequently portrayed Romani groups as displaying a patriarchal social structure with highly demarcated roles for men and women. In contrast, the significant parts that both men and women play in disseminating autobiographical, fictional, and historical narratives challenge this ubiquitous notion of largely patriarchal Romani cultures. The insights that both sexes provide on the relationship between gender and ethnicity in the context of cultural taboos, norms, and expectations unveil the complexities and diversities inherent in any minority group and its relationship to the dominant society.

Bringing together case studies from several European countries, this book provides an in-depth examination of the evolution of European spatial policy. Contributors focus on changes to the design and implementation of European policies at both national and local levels and examine institutional change, particularly Europeanization, European governance and EU enlargement. Rhetorical, discursive and representational dimensions are also interlinked to explore synergies and conflicts. The volume offers an experimentation of new interpretative approaches to spatial planning which will prove essential to the international debate.

The research of pandemics, epidemics, and pathogens like SARS-CoV-2, reaches beyond biomedicine and touches the core of modern statehood, since foci and vectors of communicable diseases are testing the efficacy of medical control at state borders.By illuminating these issues from a multidisciplinary perspective, this volume starts with historical models of quarantine. It deals with fears of contamination and the corresponding stereotypes border crossers and migrants are confronted with. At state borders the latter have been subject to the implementation of medical, genetic and biometric screening techniques. The book wants to show that the contemporary border security regimes of Western states exhibit a high share of medicalised techniques of power that originate in European modernity; it draws on the expertise of a network of researchers who deal with these issues from the early eighteenth century up to recent developments.

Since 2012, ceasefires have been used in Syria to halt violence and facilitate peace agreements. However, in this book, Marika Sosnowski argues that a ceasefire is rarely ever just a 'cease fire'. Instead, she demonstrates that ceasefires are not only military tactics but are also tools of wartime order and statebuilding. Bringing together rare primary documents and first-hand interviews with over eighty Syrians and other experts, Sosnowski offers original insights into the most critical conflict of our time, the Syrian civil war. From rebel governance to citizen and property rights, humanitarian access to economic networks, ceasefires have a range of heretofore underexamined impacts. Using the most prominent ceasefires of the war as case studies, Sosnowski demonstrates the diverse consequences of ceasefires and provides a fuller, more nuanced portrait of their role in conflict resolution.