Karsh Institute of Democracy / DEM 7500 Fall 2025 - DEM 7501 Spring 2026
Taught by Paulina Ochoa Espejo, John L. Nau III Professor of the History and Principles of Democracy
Students will each receive a $1,500 research stipend and will become fellows of the Nau Lab for the 2025–2026 academic year
Borders and boundaries are central to the modern world. But why do they matter so much? Why is it so hard to cross them, open them, or get rid of them? This interdisciplinary graduate course will ask these questions about territorial borders—and other boundaries. These questions challenge assumptions about immigration and the differences between natives and aliens, but they also show how national and territorial borders relate to other conceptual divides, such as those between nature and culture, the sacred and the profane, or civilization and barbarism. How have these distinctions shaped the modern state’s views on controlling territory? How do these boundaries shape colonialism, membership, sovereignty, the unity of the nation state? And how do they mold our thinking about the rights of indigenous peoples and of the Earth, or about the limits between the human and non-human worlds?
We will seek answers to those questions from the viewpoints of several disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Our reading will include case studies and examples of borders from across time and space. These range from the contemporary landscapes of the U.S.-Mexico border and the migrant routes around the Mediterranean, to practices of colonialism in early modernity across the world, to views and practices of pre-colonial cultures that pictured borders and boundaries without anchoring them in national states. Students will also have the chance to shape the syllabus, so that it speaks to your own interests in borders and incorporates the main sources of the disciplines represented by the members of the seminar.
During the fall semester, we will establish common historical and theoretical grounds through readings, short response papers, and in-class discussions. At the end of the first semester, students will have written a rough draft of a research paper. In the spring, we will run a workshop to develop our individual research projects by revising the draft produced in the fall. We will use the classroom to help one another prepare a piece of academic writing for publication. Our work will include practical tools such as how to set up a work schedule, identifying appropriate journals, and writing query letters. We also will go deeper into the topic of borders and develop theoretical frameworks; we will help one another refine our claims for significance, and the implications of our work, as well as clarify arguments and organize paper structures. The finale will be a small conference where we will all have the chance to present our papers alongside those of outside experts.
The seminar will be led by Paulina Ochoa Espejo, Department of Politics, with invited speakers and presenters.
We seek to create a conversation among a wide range of disciplines in the class, and graduate students from all programs, and at all stages of their graduate work, are invited to apply. To do so, please send a brief proposal (of no more than one page single-spaced) to Paulina Ochoa Espejo (fku6eq@virginia.edu) outlining your areas of study and research and your interest in the seminar’s themes by May 15, 2025. Please feel free as well to reach out with questions about the course. Students selected to participate in the seminar will enroll in DEM 7500 (3 credits) in the fall semester and DEM 7501 in the spring semester (3 credits) and be designated Graduate Fellows in the John L. Nau III History and Principles of Democracy Lab for the year. Each student will receive a stipend of $1500 to support research related to their seminar work.