This course invites you to consider the treatment of borderlands in global artistic productions from Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther film to Beyonce’s Lion King: the Gift album, as well as in literature from Fredrick Douglass to Chimamanda Adichie. These borderlands are not just geographical and mental boundaries between “You” and “I,” but they are also sites of creative affiliations and alliances, new beginnings, and resistance. Together, we will overview some of the historical conditions that make borderlands a prominent feature in these works and examine how their artistic treatments shape issues of beauty and terrorism, belonging and refugeeism, or love and war. Ultimately, students will learn how context affects literature and how literature in turn can affect the immediate conditions of our lives.