Published: 2025-06-30

The Canada/US Border: An International Boundary as Continental Cross-Section

Nathaniel R. Racine Logo ORCID

Website: https://info.tamiu.edu/facultyprofiles/faculty.aspx?email=nathaniel.racine@tamiu.edu

Abstract

This Editor’s Note opens the present issue of RIAS through a meditation on the Canada-US border not simply as a line of division but as a dynamic cross-section—one that can reveal the entangled geographies, cultures, and histories of North America. Drawing insight from across the disciplines of geography, literature, history, and environmental studies, it proposes the east-west border as a methodological lens through which to apprehend regional continuities and local specificities alike. Exploring a number of examples, the essay considers the border as simultaneously separating and connecting the two countries, paying special attention to vernacular landscapes that defy simplistic geopolitical readings. The essay further considers the symbolic and contested role of the Haskell Free Library and Opera House in Vermont, recently politicized by US authorities, as a lived space of permeability and intercommunity resilience. Ultimately, the border emerges here as a site where the global and the local, the political and the personal, intersect— offering a uniquely instructive vantage point on the interdependent realities of modern North America.

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Racine, N. R. (2025). The Canada/US Border: An International Boundary as Continental Cross-Section. Review of International American Studies, 18(1), 5–19. https://doi.org/10.31261/rias.18635

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


eISSN: 1991-2773
Ikona DOI 10.31261/RIAS

Publisher
University of Silesia Press

Licence CC Creative Commons License

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

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