Tuesday, May 26

08:00 — Installation / Performance (ongoing)
Martin Blaszk (University of Gdańsk)
Father Crossing
Location: Neophilology Patio

09:00–10:00 — Student Panel A — Identity, Gender, Culture
Location: Room 355

 Chair: Ross Aldridge

• Emilia Siagło (University of Gdańsk)
  The patriarchy’s conquest of female psyche as portrayed in works by Olivia Rodrigo
• Gabriela Szelągiewicz (University of Gdańsk)
  Reclamation of female bodies and lesbian continuum in Women Talking (2022)
• Helena Kreuzmann (Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel)
  “The spirit of the frontier is written in our hearts” – Nostalgia in Politics and the Western Genre by the Example of Donald Trump Rhetoric and the TV Series 1883

09:00–11:00 — Student playwriting workshop with Carlos Morton, session 1
Location: Room 034

10:00–10:15 — Opening Address
Location: Room 355

 Grzegorz Welizarowicz (University of Gdańsk) – “Of Conquerors”

10:15–11:00 — Keynote 1
Location: Room 355

 Marta Grzechnik (University of Gdańsk)
Conquerors of Seas and Oceans: The Maritime and Colonial League and Polish Colonial Aspirations, 1924–1939

11:00–11:15 — Break

11:15–12:30 — Session 1 – Colonialism, Environment, Politics of Place
Location: Room 355

 Chair: Anna Mazurkiewicz

• Jia Lu (Valdosta State University)
  Mapping Belonging: Public Art, Murals, and the Politics of Place in the U.S. South
• Juan Pedro Martín-Villarreal (Universidad de Cádiz)
  Colonial Desire and Poetics of Itinerance in El Mehdati’s Supersaurio (2022)
• Jutta Zimmermann (Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel)
  Water Wars in the Mexican-American Borderlands: A Blue Humanities Perspective on Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife

12:30–13:30 — Lunch

13:30–14:15 — Keynote 2
Location: Room 355

 Chair: Carlos Morton

 Francisco Lomelí (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Chicano Literature and the U.S.-Mexican Border: Roaming Texts that Speak Two Tongues

14:15–15:30 — Session 2 – Migration, Memory, Testimony
Location: Room 355

 Chair: Ross Aldridge

• Martin Blaszk (University of Gdańsk)
  Father Crossing (installation/performance discussion)
• Ewa Antoszek (Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin)
  Narratives of displacement: A Dream Called Home and Silent Trees (2024)
• Anna Mazurkiewicz (University of Gdańsk)
  Book Presentation: Finding the Man that Everyone Knew. 

15:30–15:45 — Break

15:45–17:00 — Session 3 – Performance and Literature
Location: Room 355

 Chair: Grzegorz Welizarowicz

• Herbert Siguenza (American actor)
  Moliere in Alta California: Chicano actor and playwright Herbert Siguenza discusses why he adapts European classics for a Chicano audience
• Georgia Scott (American writer)
  “Love Conquers All?” — performative reading from Aphrodite’s Swimsuit

17:30–19:00 — Film Screening
Silent Trees (dir. Agnieszka Zwiefka)
Location: Room 362

Herbert Siguenza in Diego Rivera: His Story

Diego Rivera: HIS STORY is an evocative one-person show that delves into the extraordinary life of Diego Rivera through his art and relationships with women and patrons. Set in the aftermath of the funeral of his iconic wife, Frida Kahlo, Rivera returns to his studio, grappling with grief, confusion, and a looming sense of mortality. In his solitude, Rivera is visited by Cantinflas, a charismatic figure embodying Mexican consciousness and the common man. Through a compelling blend of visuals and music, Rivera recounts his vibrant journey through art, politics, and his complex relationships.

The play offers an intimate look at a revolutionary artist whose mural movement elevated Mexico on the global stage, and explores his tumultuous yet inspiring relationship with Frida Kahlo. Diego Rivera: HIS STORY is a tribute to one of Mexico’s most influential visual artists of the 20th century, brought to life by the acclaimed actor, playwright, and visual artist Herbert Siguenza of the Chicano group Culture Clash.

Written by Carlos Morton and Herbert Siguenza.

Duration: 65 Minutes

Georgia Scott “Love Conquers All?” 

American writer reads from her new novel Aphrodite’s Swimsuit 

A performative reading from Aphrodite’s Swimsuit, Georgia Scott’s first novel. 

Intrigued by a woman’s radical past, a young British diplomat has an affair during his first posting abroad. In a European nation transitioning to freedom after years of communist rule, this reverse age gap and forbidden love story has ramifications long after the summer of ’95 ends.

Georgia Scott is from Boston but has spent most of her life abroad. During the Cold War, she worked with dissident writers. Her writing has appeared in The Massachusetts Review and other literary journals in America and throughout Europe and been translated into numerous languages. Her books include two of poetry and a memoir. 

Border Seminar 2026 “Conquest, Borders, Arts” — Call for Papers

“The title by conquest is acquired and maintained by force.” Chief Justice Marshall, Johnson and Graham’s Lessee v. M’Intosh (1823)

“The Conqueror model contains a submodel we shall call the Empire model, or model of imperium, which is the process by which the prototypical conqueror ‘reaches out’ and ‘grabs’ or ‘seizes’ new lands in order to dominate those lands and the indigenous peoples living there.” Steven T. Newcomb Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery (2008)

2026 marks four years since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In hindsight, Russia’s neo-imperial ambitions appear as heralding a global re-awakening of imaginaries and practices of conquest. We live in times of terrible bloodshed. Another school is bombed. Global military spending has never been this high.

In Border Seminar 2026 we want to ask what we see as related questions of conquest, borders, and arts.

• What can the history of conquest propaganda teach us about contemporary imperial imaginaries?
• How does the imperium reproduce itself through ideology, legal frameworks and cultural narratives?
• How do various artistic genres and performances feed (or resist) into what anthropologist Michael V. Wilcox calls the “terminal narratives” or the lasting of the conquered/bordered peoples and institute (or erode) the moral economy of conquest?
• What cognitive models expressed in discourses normalize conquest and divorce it from its consequences (i.e. migrations, displacement) and what are those that sustain hope and resist apathy?
• If borders and the conqueror (ego cogito/ego conquiro) are the essential products of Modernity, what does their relationship tell us about the darker, occluded dimensions of modern borders (i.e. as instruments of both fortification and expansion)?
• What are the repressed pluriversal alternatives to these models?

Papers addressing these and related questions from the perspectives of global studies, American studies, literary studies, popular culture, cognitive science, performance studies, linguistics, education, history, art history, anthropology, and other fields are welcome. Following models of performance as research and embodied research practice, we also welcome creative responses to the theme, including texts, performances, and artworks as well as all mixed-format (scholarly/artistic) presentations. Selections from the proceedings will be published in the second volume of the IBSC Reader series.

Border Seminar 2026 “Conquest, Borders, Arts” is intended to offer an environment in which the arts and scholarship freely intersect. The program includes keynote lectures by IBSC scholar Marta Grzechnik (author of Conquerors of Seas and Oceans: The Maritime and Colonial League and Polish Colonial Aspirations, 1924–1939), and by Chicanx scholars Francisco Lomelí and María Herrera-Sobek.On May 27, Chicano actor and artist Herbert Siguenza will perform Diego Rivera: His Story, a one-man show. Creative workshops by California artists will be offered to an international group of students. Performance artist Martin Błaszk will lead a workshop and a performance/installation.

Border Seminar 2023: Migration Narratives and Border Studies:  May 15-26, 2023

 CONFERENCE Program: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17Irc3G9DC57cZEyh-WcbVQGMNwsz1vIB/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=104991489835999765556&rtpof=true&sd=true

 Conference Handbook – practical info:

 https://ibsc.ug.edu.pl/newsletters/2023-border-seminar-conference-handbook/

Border Seminar is an international conference organized by the Border Studies Group (BSG) working at the Institute of English and American Studies, Faculty of Languages. University of Gdansk. The idea of the conference came from a longing for a better understanding of what seemed to the members of the BSG as a highly undertheorized and misunderstood concept of the border.  We think of the border in as many senses as there are. We are eager to learn from interdisciplinary dialogs, to seek new vocabularies and approaches to break affective aporias or imaginary spells of the border.

The Program of the Border Seminar 2021 is available here: https://ibsc.ug.edu.pl/?page_id=25864