Bordering Genders, Genres, Genera: An Introduction

This introductory chapter draws upon the current expansion of border studies to examine the wide-ranging interpretations of borders and boundaries in the contemporary world, which are offered in the volume Rethinking Identities Across Boundaries—Genders/Genres/Genera. It reflects on the volume’s engagement with the formation, reformation, and dynamic becoming of identities across boundaries of disparate kinds, across gender and sexual categories, typologies of species, textual and narrative edges, linguistic frontiers, arts and genres frames. Furthermore, this introduction explores how the diverse chapters intersect, creating crossings that enrich the volume’s many possible thematic and conceptual cartographies. These entanglements demonstrate the valuable interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary methodologies adopted in this volume, developed by border theorists whose contributions have become increasingly influential.