GBST10010 Of borders and belonging

Academic Year 2022/2023

*** Not available in the academic year indicated above ***

Perhaps more than most, the island of Ireland has been, and is, a laboratory for the management of movement and the delineation of space. As early as 1892, the customs control at Ellis Island was established to control the influx of refugees such as Annie Moore and her two brothers fleeing the island. In the 1920s we see the first attempts to enforce communitarian separatedness via partition, a model that would come to be exported to Cyprus, the Indian Subcontinent and indeed Palestine. More recently, we have heard about the experimental fantasies of the Brexit sea border, while of course it was here in Dublin that the Dublin Regulation set the terms for policing Fortress Europe in the Mediterranean. In short, we have a privileged, local vantage point from which to think about one of today’s most global questions which is exactly what the proposed core module does.

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Curricular information is subject to change

Learning Outcomes:

The purpose of the module is to explore some of the key problems and solutions that scholars have proposed to address the ‘global turn in the humanities’. By the end of the module students should understand:
1. The question of methodological nationalism: i.e. the belief in the naturalness of the nation-state as a unit of analysis. The objective of a global methodology should be to question that presumed naturalness, to ask how it came to appear as such and to unmask the inherent violence of nation state formation by refusing to give it respectable academic cover.
2. The question of Eurocentricity: i.e. the tendency to deploy the category of Europe as category of analysis but which persistently fails to historicize it as emergent subject in its own right.
3. And lastly the question of anthropocentricity: i.e. the tendency to assume a privileged place for the Anthropocene as an agent of historical change. If anything the global pandemic we are facing has brought home the hubris of that position and ought to have endowed us with a newfound appreciation for how and why it is that borders became necessary means of social and political organisation.

In addition, students will be equipped with a number of key skills which include:
- Independent research
- Essay planning
- Understanding of what makes a good argument and how best to convey it


Indicative Module Content:

This core module takes the history of borders—symbols of the intersection of the local and the global, the ideal and the material— as its structuring principle: and explores over ten weeks five different disciplinary approaches to their study:

- Anthropology
- Gender Studies
- Geography
- History
- Political Theory

Student Effort Hours: 
Student Effort Type Hours
Seminar (or Webinar)

18

Specified Learning Activities

45

Autonomous Student Learning

45

Total

108

Approaches to Teaching and Learning:
This module combines large-group and small-group teaching, through a weekly
lecture and seminar. Weekly lectures provide overviews of weekly topics, with focus
on how various disciplines have approached the questions of borders and belonging. Weekly seminars focus on small-group
active / task-based learning using both secondary and primary sources related to the
weekly topic covered in the lecture. Autonomous learning is nurtured through
required preparatory reading each week, and a formative and summative written
assignment. Key research, writing and citation skills are explicitly incorporated into
seminar work and are assessed and advanced from the formative to the summative
assignments. 
Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Not applicable to this module.


Module Requisites and Incompatibles
Not applicable to this module.
 
Assessment Strategy  
Description Timing Open Book Exam Component Scale Must Pass Component % of Final Grade
Essay: This is a final piece of writing (approx 2000-2500 words) which will be based on the midterm essay plan, and upon the feedback received on that piece of writing. Week 12 n/a Graded Yes

60

Assignment: This will be an essay plan, feedback upon which will be given approximately half way through the semester and thereafter used to write the final essay Week 6 n/a Graded No

30

Continuous Assessment: This component will assess the participation and attendance of students in this module and will be ongoing throughout the semester. Throughout the Trimester n/a Graded No

10


Carry forward of passed components
No
 
Resit In Terminal Exam
Spring No
Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 
Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Feedback individually to students, on an activity or draft prior to summative assessment
• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

No feedback will be given on the continuous assessment component. Feedback on the midterm essay plan will be communicated to students individually approx two weeks after the submission with plenty of opportunity to ask questions and to incorporate said feedback in the final essay. Final essay feedback will be available upon request after the grades have been formally released.