Lecture explores Trump’s border wall in relation to geographic scholarship

U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to build a “big” and “beautiful” wall across the Mexico and U.S. border will be the topic of a lecture at York University on March 14.

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Melissa W. Wright

Delivered by Professor Melissa W. Wright of Pennsylvania State University, the talk entitled “Killing the Border Life/La Vida Fronteriza: Trump’s Wall” will explore the threat for social and environmental well-being across the Mexico-U.S. borderlands with respect to a border wall.

The York University Geography Alumni Network presents the lecture, to be held from 5:30 to 7 p.m. in Room 519, Kaneff Tower.

Wright will discuss how the border wall, and its surrounding debates, raises multiple issues central to political ecological and human geographic scholarship into governance across the borderlands. Her particular focus is a comparison of the different kinds of “border thinking” that frame these debates and provide synergy for those coalitions fighting to protect the ecological and social well-being of this endangered landscape.

Wright is a professor and department head of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and a professor of geography at Pennsylvania State University. Her research investigates the rapidly changing situations in northern Mexico along its border with the United States, focusing on issues of governance, state terror and social movements.

For more on this event, visit the event posting on the Department of Geography’s website.