Introduction: Border(ing)s in contemporary short stories of the british isles

Abstract

Border phenomena and border imaginaries have invited critical attention for some time, but this book focuses on the various ways in which the contemporary short story mirrors, questions and engages with border issues. The introduction sketches relevant research traditions in interdisciplinary border studies and in short story studies, pointing out that the concept of the border, as well as neighbouring notions such as liminality and intersectionality, illuminate the short story’s special aesthetic potential. The introduction concludes with a survey of the collection’s chapters, which explore the semantic richness of borders in a wide range of twenty-first-century short story writing.