Border-Walls, Fire-Walls, Sea-Walls

Global-Cultural Resources as Limits

How do walls—man-made and otherwise—define global-cultural limits? How do the physical/material characteristics of walls bear on/inform/reflect/etc. their religious, political, social, and economic meanings, and vice versa? How do walls mark cultural relations of infinity and finiteness, abundance and lack, presence and absence, etc.? What kinds of cultural dynamics are generated in/by walls? What kinds of cultural (self-)reflections might be delimited, inscribed, or circumscribed in/by walls?

Premodern Symposium: Walls Past and Present

October 9th and 10th, with Professor David Frye of Eastern Connecticut State University, author of Walls. A History of Civilization in Blood and Brick.

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Walls/David-Frye/9781501172700

Lecture by Professor Frye on October 9, 2019, at 5:00-6:45 pm in Dauer 219 (Ruth McQuown Room): “How Ancient Walls begat Modern Barriers.”

Livestream Link: https://mediasite.video.ufl.edu/Mediasite/Play/08714d2a11134a3892db33fbb7767e921d

Panel Discussion “Premodern Walls: Literal and Figurative Functions,” with Professor Frye and UF faculty on October 10, 2019, at 5:00-6:45 pm in Dauer 219 (Ruth McQuown Room). With brief presentations by Eleni Bozia (Classics): “‘All Roads Lead to Rome’: When your Walls Include the World”; Nina Caputo (History): “Real and Imagined Walls in Premodern Jewish Culture”; Florin Curta (History): “Justinian’s Walls and the Ethnogenesis of the Slavs”; Ashley Jones (Art History): “Gemstones and the Walls of the Heavenly Jerusalem”; and Richard Wang (Languages, Literatures, and Cultures): “Ethnic and Religious Interactions along the Great Wall in the Ming Dynasty.” Moderated by Mary Watt (Languages, Literatures, and Cultures).

Livestream Link: https://mediasite.video.ufl.edu/Mediasite/Play/67f330e3413f485da5dbb5e30beff6621d

Modern Symposium: Walls Present and Future

November 13 and 14, with freelance environmental journalist Dr. Susanne Götze, author of Land Unter im Paradies. Reportagen aus dem Menschenzeitalter (‘Land Under’ in Paradise. Reports from the Anthropocene).

https://www.oekom.de/nc/buecher/vorschau/buch/land-unter-im-paradies.html

Lecture by Dr. Götze on November 13, 2019, at 5:00-6:15 pm in Dauer 219 (Ruth McQuown Room): “‘Walls in the Head’: Challenges Facing Global Action on Climate Change.”

Livestream Link: https://mediasite.video.ufl.edu/Mediasite/Play/6f508d9c728d43c0abb606f6b4e6b5c71d

Panel Discussion, “Walls of Present and Future: The Genuine, the Imaginary, and the Fake in Global Climate Change Discourse,” with Dr. Götze and UF faculty on November 14, 2019, at 4:00-5:30 pm (the Ocora Room, Pugh Hall). Discussants: Marcel Lewandowsky (Center for European Studies), Jasmine McNealy (Journalism), Ken Sassaman (Anthropology), and Robert T. Walker (Geography). Moderated by Terry Harpold (English),.

Livestream Link: https://mediasite.video.ufl.edu/Mediasite/Play/681ac41358534e57bc6bf9b15673898f1d

Tertia Comparationis

. . .

Cueva de las Manos, Argentina

. . .

And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left. Exodus 14: 21-22.

And the LORD said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thine hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valour… So the people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets: and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city. Joshua 6: 2/20

Jerusalem shall be inhabited as towns without walls for the multitude of men and cattle therein: For I, saith the LORD, will be unto her a wall of fire round about, and will be the glory in the midst of her. Zechariah 2: 4-5

. . .