Is Superman Canadian? Who decides, and what is at stake in such a question? How is the Underground Railroad commemorated differently in Canada and the United States, and can those differences be bridged? How can we acknowledge properly the Canadian labour behind Hollywood filmmaking, and what would that do to our sense of national cinema? Reading between the Borderlines grapples with these questions and others surrounding the production and consumption of literary, cinematic, musical, visual, and print culture across the Canada-US border. Discussing a range of popular as well as highbrow cultural forms, this collection investigates patterns of cross-border cultural exchange that become visible within a variety of genres, regardless of their place in any arbitrarily devised cultural hierarchy. The essays also consider the many interests served, compromised, or negated by the operations of the transnational economy, the movement of culture's "raw material" across nation-state borders in literal and conceptual terms, and the configuration of a material citizenship attributed to or negotiated around border-crossing cultural objects. Challenging the oversimplification of cultural products labelled either "Canadian" or "American," Reading between the Borderlines contends with the particularities and complications of North American cultural exchange, both historically and in the present.

Gillian Roberts is an associate professor in North American Cultural Studies at the University of Nottingham. She is co-investigator of the Leverhulme Trust–funded Culture and the Canada–US Border international research network. She recently completed a monograph on cultural representations of the Canada–US border.

Gillian Roberts' profile page

“An excellent collection that takes a new and compelling approach to culture and the border, Reading between the Borderlines makes very strong addition to the literature on borderlands in general, and the Canada-US border in particular.” Kyle Conway, University of Ottawa and co-editor of Beyond the Border: Tensions across the Forty-ninth Parallel in the Great Plains and Prairies

"The one impression Reading Between the Border Lines reinforce(s) is that borders exist not only between nations/countries but also inside them, and remain sources of tension, both creative and destructive." British Journal of Canadian Studies

“Reading between the Borderlines – a remarkably even, fresh, and insightful collection of essays – pushes the reader to question national ownership of texts and lays bare how and when the border matters in cultural production and consumption, and when it doesn’t.” Andrew C. Holman, Bridgewater State University, and co-editor of The Same but Different: Hockey in Quebec