#17 BIG Podcast – “Border Film and Border Studies”

featuring Michael Dear – Professor Emeritus of City & Regional Planning at UC Berkeley, California, United States

Borders are legal constructs: conventional lines on maps, landmarks on the ground, zone of cooperation, control and violence. But borders are also an artistic object. Sometimes, it is the border itself which is the support of a work of art. Other times, they appear in works of photography, comics, and in movies. Today we are going to talk about “Border Film” with Michael Dear who has just published a book called « Border Witness, Reimagining The US-Mexico Borderlands Through Film ». It is an opportunity to learn more about the construction of mental, cultural and artistic representations of borders and their complex links with reality.

Michael Dear is Professor Emeritus in the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley, and Honorary Professor in the Bartlett School of Planning at University College, London. He is the author/editor of fifteen books, and many scholarly essays. His work has been translated into many languages, and he has lectured in over twenty countries in four continents. He has also written widely for non-academic publications, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, National Geographic en español, the Huffington Post, and Politico Magazine. Michael has been a Guggenheim Fellowship holder, a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, a Fulbright Specialist, and Fellow at the Rockefeller Center in Bellagio, Italy. He has received the highest honors for creativity and excellence in research from several organizations, as well as numerous undergraduate teaching and graduate mentorship awards. In 2014, he was elected as a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales (his country of birth).

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