*CFP* "(B)ORDER AND (B)ORDERING: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY COMPANION", EDITED VOLUME

(B)Order and (B)Ordering: An Interdisciplinary Companion, the intended edited volume, will be published from Edwin Mellen Press.

It will focus on the idea of border and its various geopolitical, sociocultural and cognitive incarnations. In recent times, border has emerged as a common trope in contemporary language with phenomena such as ‘bordering’, ‘borderless’, ‘building borders’, ‘breaking borders’, ‘crossing borders’, ‘porous borders’ and ‘shifting borders’. Whether concrete or shadow, borders are omnipresent. They have been frequently erected and decimated in history and will be in future depending upon the need of the hour. Such ‘needs’, as this series will highlight, are always generated from the above. It seems social sciences and humanities are obsessed with borders and the latter have been invoked intermittently to prove a point and also its flip-side: to negate a point. Even in the daily humdrum of life, we never fail to feel the eerie presence or rather absent-presence of border. At times, it is WE who knowingly or unknowingly create these building blocks: brick after brick piled upon each other and cemented together, so that we can keep the ‘other’, the ‘stranger’, the ‘foreigner’ at bay. Borders are important in keeping “us” safe and feel secure from “them”. Borders are in the air we breathe.

Much more than Trump contemplating erecting a wall at the US-Mexico border or the immigrants sailing through the border of Mediterranean Sea to enter Europe or Rohingyas of Arakan Valley crossing the border and seeking refuge in India or even the bellicosity between India and China over settling the border at Doklam, it is the mental border with which we are reckoning the most at this moment. The Great Borders which human beings have built over the course of the period run riot throughout the cultural topography of the world; these man-made wonders are the Great Wall of race, the Great Wall class, the Great Wall of caste, the Great Wall of gender, the Great Wall of religion, to name a few. These borders now stand tall and unperturbed, significantly obstructing our vision of the other and also our vision for the future.

The work focuses on the issues of border and bordering in its varied usage— physical and metaphysical— cutting across varied aspects of modern world and will focus on the way we (b)order ourselves and others incessantly. The theme of the book will be centered around but certainly not limited to the following:

• Border in art, humanities and social sciences 
• Border in contemporary politics 
• Border and race/gender/ethnicity/caste/religion/region 
• Border in popular culture 
• Border and marginality 
• (B)order and dis(b)order 
• Border and identity 
• Border and migration

Proposals submission deadline: 5 May, 2019

Full Chapters due: 1 August, 2019

All proposals (not more than 300 words) must be sent to jayjitsarkars@gmail.com and auritram@gmail.com

Jayjit Sarkar and Auritra Munshi teach in the Department of English, Raiganj University, West Bengal, India. They can be reached at jayjitsarkars@gmail.com and auritram@gmail.com, respectively.