This course will explore the diverse Hispanic reactions, confrontations, reformulations and creations that have occurred due to border encounters among different societies, communities, and individuals from the Middle Ages to the 21st Century. Throughout the course, we will analyze how these encounters shape the definition and understanding of the self, the other, national identities, and the world. To this end, a great variety of transatlantic cultural products will be incorporated; these will consist of an array of texts of different genres as well as films from the Hispanic world. In addition to the primary materials, the discussions will be informed by political, economic, social and cultural readings in order to contextualize the border encounters. Critical theoretical works regarding notions of the border, identity, and the other will be incorporated.