Walls and Fences: Perspectives from Universities and Museums‪.‬

Walls and fences and other barriers are always and everywhere. They were then, and they are now. They are there, and they are here. And barriers come in almost infinite varieties, including age-old socio-psychological modes and newfound virtual ones. This special edition of Journal of the Southwest describes and analyzes from differing disciplinary perspectives the realities and meanings of walls, fences, and barriers of all varieties. Most of the contributions center on barriers on the U.S.--Mexican boundary line or those that blight the borderlands more generally conceived. A couple of the essays focus more broadly on fences, walls, and other barriers in American history and culture. Both boundary-focused and more broadly conceived essays touch on issues like security, civility, exclusionary values, property rights, privacy, environmentalism, and aesthetic qualities of barriers. Fences and walls often reflect and symbolize all of those prejudices, perplexities, and conundrums of the human condition and their public policy implications.