Mapping German-Polish Borderlands in Contemporary Literature
Mentor 1
Karolina May-Chu
Start Date
16-4-2021 12:00 AM
Description
Ideas surrounding borders and their figurative meanings have gained increasing attention in the academic and literary world -- but how can these ideas be used by students and scholars in the classroom? Physical borders are staging grounds for social and cultural crossings that create layered identities that individuals navigate between. These figurative borders can be further abstracted to include life and death or belonging and ostracization. This project maps the shifting physical borders of Germany, Poland, and Ukraine during the 20th and 21st centuries, while tracing the journeys of fictional characters in the novels Katzenberge (2010) by Sabrina Janesch, Himmelskörper (1998) by Tanja Dückers, and House of Day, House of Night (1988) by Olga Tokarczuk. I use ArcGIS Online, a cloud-based geographic information system, to map these borders on layers. The maps are integrated into a story map, which provides more narrative and historical context. Viewers can scroll through layers to observe both physical and figurative border shifts in the regions of western Poland, Silesia, Galicia, and East Prussia. Each location visited by the characters as well as the location of symbolic events and figures are marked. The conglomeration of these mapped case studies will serve as a visual representation of the fluidity of political borders and figurative boundaries to students, instructors, and scholars. When completed, the map-project will accompany Dr. Karolina May-Chu’s planned book on The Poetics of Borders, Belonging, and Mobility in Contemporary German and Polish Literature and Culture, which is currently in preparation.
Mapping German-Polish Borderlands in Contemporary Literature
Ideas surrounding borders and their figurative meanings have gained increasing attention in the academic and literary world -- but how can these ideas be used by students and scholars in the classroom? Physical borders are staging grounds for social and cultural crossings that create layered identities that individuals navigate between. These figurative borders can be further abstracted to include life and death or belonging and ostracization. This project maps the shifting physical borders of Germany, Poland, and Ukraine during the 20th and 21st centuries, while tracing the journeys of fictional characters in the novels Katzenberge (2010) by Sabrina Janesch, Himmelskörper (1998) by Tanja Dückers, and House of Day, House of Night (1988) by Olga Tokarczuk. I use ArcGIS Online, a cloud-based geographic information system, to map these borders on layers. The maps are integrated into a story map, which provides more narrative and historical context. Viewers can scroll through layers to observe both physical and figurative border shifts in the regions of western Poland, Silesia, Galicia, and East Prussia. Each location visited by the characters as well as the location of symbolic events and figures are marked. The conglomeration of these mapped case studies will serve as a visual representation of the fluidity of political borders and figurative boundaries to students, instructors, and scholars. When completed, the map-project will accompany Dr. Karolina May-Chu’s planned book on The Poetics of Borders, Belonging, and Mobility in Contemporary German and Polish Literature and Culture, which is currently in preparation.
