Without You I'm Nothing Conversations between Windsor and Detroit

In pulling together a collection of local history books for the Bookmobile it emerged that there are two distinct sets of titles that indicate that Windsor’s history is only tangentially involved in Detroit’s and Detroit’s history is entirely free of any reference to Windsor.  Official history stops at the border, but longtime residents of both cities will suggest a very different interpretation of place, one that is often narrated by a sense that the the two cities were, in the past, continuous and uninterrupted and that Windsor was one of many Detroit neighbourhoods rather than a border town of another country.  These videos presents a collage of impressions about these border cities as told by local residents on either side: Windsorites talked about Detroit and Detroiters recall their time spent in Windsor.  Many people relayed the difficulty of crossing after 2009, when passport regulations became more stringent.

about Frontier Files

The Frontier Files is an online archive of visual and material culture relating to geographic borders in North America and elsewhere. This site documents the Border Bookmobile Project (2010-2013) which served as the beginning of ongoing research into the relationship between contemporary borders and the western, historical concept of the frontier. Images and documents chart the shifting aesthetics and politics of borders over the last century. This archive is organized by Lee Rodney, Associate Professor of Media Art Histories and Visual Culture at the University of Windsor, Canada.

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