Boundaries Unbound: Gains and Losses

Keynote at the Women in German Studies Open Conference 2024: Boundaries and Barriers: Interrogating Ideas and Practices of Demarcation in German Studies at University College Cork, 4–6 Jul 2024

Beginning with a reflection on the current state of our profession when viewed from the perspective of borders, barriers and boundaries, the contribution compares and contrasts the border-paradigm with alternative models (such as ecology, symbiosis or entangled history, for example) which seek to displace and, ideally, replace the logic of borders. After exploring their respective similarities and differences as well as their advantages and disadvantages, I will try argue for important limits to the dissolution of boundaries.

The literary scholar Eva Geulen is the Director of the ZfL, executive board member of the Centers for Advanced Studies in the Humanities Berlin, and Professor for European Culture and the History of Knowledge at the Institute for Cultural History and Theory of the Humboldt University of Berlin.