Romulus 2018

Editorial Board’s Column
The editorial team of Romulus consists of people from six different countries with
diverse cultural backgrounds, and each person is embedded in different academic
disciplines. Yet we have all shared the same experience over the past several
years: cultural and political practices of protectionism, austerity and resurging
nationalism have re-erected and deepened borders between people. When we
chose the topic of ‘borders’ for this year’s edition of our literary magazine, we
thought of the brutality people face in the US-Mexican border territory, in which
over four-hundred migrants died last year alone trying to cross the fence, the
desert and the Rio Grande. Other similar border conflicts immediately comes
to mind, be it the ongoing struggle of refugees crossing the Mediterranean Sea
or those stranded in Calais hoping to reach Great Britain. With Brexit looming
over all our lives, another border inside Europe has been assertively redrawn with
unpredictable consequences.
Paradoxically, we noted that we also live in a time that carries the promise of
boundless, borderless connections through technology, social media and global
mobility. Travelling around the world and communicating with people near and
far has never been easier and more accessible than it is now. If you belong to
the privileged group of young, well-educated and sometimes even well funded
academics, then crossing borders, both the literal kind between countries and,
more figuratively speaking, between disciplines and contexts, is expected and
encouraged.
However, in the midst of all that border-crossing, networking and connecting,
a deep sense of loneliness and isolation often grows. We chose our cover piece
because it so poignantly shows how that which connects us can also separate us –
the very definition of what a border is.
We are grateful to Wolfson College for giving us the opportunity to explore the
paradoxical character of borders in our magazine. We firmly believe that academics
as well as artists ought to make seen that which is hiding in plain sight, not simply
recording and reproducing the visible, but, as the painter Paul Klee famously said,
making things visible. The borders we encounter might sometimes be structures
made from concrete and barbed wire, but often they are immaterial. They take
shape in our institutions, our work and family life and in what we imagine to be
our most private moments. Through images and poems, essays and short stories,
Romulus depicts and dissects borders as a multi-facetted phenomenon.
Faced with the reconstruction of borders we had hoped to cross and overcome
for good, affecting all of our lives, we hope to contribute in some way to a critical
and creative engagement with the borders both in and around us.
Lorenzo Petralia, ‘Dreaming Barbwire’
EDITORIAL BOARD:
Eduardo Paredes Ocampo
Emese Végh
Lisa Heida
Laura González Salmerón
Gesa Jessen
GRAPHIC DESIGN:
Agnese Tauriņa
PROOFREADING:
John Francis Davis
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