This collection of essays aims to widen the current critique on borders by examining their entanglements with constructions of identity and disciplinary categories. In particular, it calls into question established models of gender, notions of narrative genres and typological genera of borders in todays literary, artistic, philosophical, and socio-political discourse. The chapters interrogate boundaries and boundary-crossing not only in terms of geographical frontiers and the physical acts of trespassing, but also as discursive constructs that police crossing subjects as gendered subjects, on the one hand, and identify artistic genres and academic disciplines as fixed, sealed-in ways of understanding the world, on the other. Taking inspiration from the multiple meanings of the Italian word genere (which stands for gender, genre, and typology/genus simultaneously), the volume reflects on the gendered, narrative, and typological nature of borders and border imagery, and on the significance and potentialities of crossover phenomena taking place in borderlands, in the fields of arts, literature, anthropology, sociology and philosophy.

Claudia Capancioni is Reader in English Literature at Bishop Grosseteste University, UK. She specialises in Victorian and contemporary women writers, life and travel writing, and gender studies.

Mariaconcetta Costantini is Full Professor of English Literature at G. dAnnunzio University of Chieti-Pescara, Italy. She specialises in Victorian and contemporary literature, especially in popular fiction, women writers, and the Gothic.

Mara Mattoscio teaches English Literature and Culture at the University of Macerata, Italy. She specialises in Anglophone postcolonial literature and film, race and gender studies, and critical theory.

 

1 Bordering Genders, Genres, Genera: An Introduction Claudia Capancioni, Mariaconcetta Costantini, and Mara Mattoscio.- 2 Biometric Technologies, Gendered Subjectivities, and Artistic Resistance C.L. Quinan.- 3 My tongue doesnt believe in boundaries: A®tivism Across the US/Mexico Border Lorena Carbonara and Dora Renna.- 4 Migrant Womens Documentary Filmmaking: Shifting Positionalities and Precarious Creativity in the Experience of Five Latin American Directors Dalila Missero.- 5 Ive always thought that we are living on the cowhide: Chen Lis Edge as Method and Border-Queering inThe Edge of the Island Li-hsin Hsu.- 6 Crossing the Borders of Genders and Genres: Akwaeke EmezisFreshwateras a World-Making Narrative of Identity Reaffirmation Alessandra Di Pietro.- 7 Mobility, Belonging and the Utopia of a Borderless World: A Spatial and Identitarian Reading of Imbolo MbuesBehold theDreamers Mariaconcetta Costantini.- 8 Violent Conclusions versus Hopeful Returns: Zadie SmithsThe Embassy of Cambodia and the Performative Border-Crossing of the Narrative Voice Mara Mattoscio.- 9 Morphing Forms: Metamorphosis in Twenty-First Century British Womens Experimental Short Fiction Helen Cousins.- 10 This particular art [is] all about walls: Nomadic Poetics of Identity in Ali SmithsHow to be both Claudia Capancioni.- 11 Oblique Emotions and Border Intimacies in Dionne BrandsTheory Libe García Zarranz 12 An Unresolved Crossing: David Foster Wallaces Oblivion Adriano Ardovino and Pia Masiero.- 13 Crossing Gender: Andy Warhols Candy Darling, America and Angela CartersThe Passion of New Eve Marie Mulvey-Roberts.- 14 Genders, GYnealogies, GYne(co)alogies of Decolonial Geo-thalasso-corpographies: A Theoretical Reflection on Interconnectedness in Gender Configurations Paola Zaccaria.- 15 Spivak and Sontag: Deconstructing Borders Through a Philosophical Appraisal of Literature Chiara Scarlato.