Drawing the Medicine Line: Bordertextures in Whoop-Up Country

Astrid M. Fellner

doi:10.31261/rias.18257

Published: 2025-01-03

Vol. 18 No. 1 (2025)

Drawing the Medicine Line: Bordertextures in Whoop-Up Country

Astrid M. Fellner

Website: https://www.amerikanistik.uni-saarland.de/faculty-staff/prof-dr-fellner

Section: FEATURES

https://doi.org/10.31261/rias.18257

Abstract

This article focuses on “Whoop-Up Country” in the Canadian/American West, analyzing a series of multi-layered cartographic texts through the lens of bordertextures. While the meaning of the Whoop-Up Trail may have faded into obscurity, the hidden histories, geographies, and knowledges of this border zone have survived and continue to resurface in the cultural imaginary. Zooming in on texts by Paul F. Sharp, Wallace Stegner, and Thomas King, the analysis carves out the multi-dimensional (hi)stories of the Canada-US border that account for the complexity of North American borderlands.

Keywords:

Canada-US border , border thinking , bordertexturing , deep map , Whoop-Up Country

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Fellner, A. M. (2025). Drawing the Medicine Line: Bordertextures in Whoop-Up Country. Review of International American Studies, 18(1), 155–180. https://doi.org/10.31261/rias.18257

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Astrid M. Fellner

fellner@mx.uni-saarland.de
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1566-2923

Affiliation:

Saarland University, Germany Germany

Bio Statement (e.g., department and rank)

Astrid Fellner is a Professor of North American Literary and Cultural Studies at Saarland University, where she also serves as Dean of Studies at the Philosophical Faculty (2020–2024). She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies (1999) and a Habilitation from the University of Vienna (2006). Her research spans North American literatures and cultures, gender studies, border studies, and body studies, with a focus on transnational and transcultural spaces. Previously, she has held positions as Austrian Chair at Stanford University and visiting fellowships at the University of Illinois, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Dr. Fellner has contributed extensively to scholarship, co-editing volumes such as Narratives of Border Crossings (2021) and Handbook of Higher Education in Latin America (2020), and leading projects on diversity and transculturality. Her work is supported by awards including the Theodor Körner Fonds Research Prize and the Siemens Prize for her dissertation.

Vol. 18 No. 1 (2025)
Published: 2025-06-30

eISSN: 1991-2773

10.31261/RIAS

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University of Silesia Press

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Drawing the Medicine Line: Bordertextures in Whoop-Up Country

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Keywords:

Astrid M. Fellner

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