Along the Line

Writing with comics and graphic narrative in geography

de Juliet Fall (auteur)

Collection : EPFL Press

avril 2025

À paraître | le 02/04/2025

Medias

Présentation

March 13, 2020. The Covid-19 pandemic spreads around the world. Taking this event as the starting point for her reflections, Juliet Fall sets out with her family by bicycle to retrace the physical traces of the border separating France and the Canton of Geneva, step by step, following the border stones and boundary markers. Over the course of a three-year quest, the author explores what borders are, and our relationship with this invisible line that impacts both our bodies and our imaginations, looking back at the long and eventful history of its construction, evolution and maintenance. This graphic essay is the result of a new kind of social research, which moves away from academic standards, giving as much space to words as to images.

“Along The Line invites us to slow down and look closer. Like the author on her sojourns looking for 19th century border stones, I found myself peering metaphorically and literally at the various boundaries that composed our social life during Covid-19. Her sketches and political geography theory equally illuminate a period we all lived through but have struggled to assimilate. What a gift.”

Jason Dittmer
Professor at University College London

Sommaire

Acknowledgements
Preface by Joëlle Kuntz
Introduction
1 / LOCKING THE LINE
Chapter 1 / Fieldwork and research design
Lockdown and beyond / Researching during a crisis / Beating the bounds / Exploring, photographing and documenting the border zone visually / Open visual research design and slow scholarship / Observing and researching infrastructure
2 / MAKING THE LINE
Chapter 2 / Thinking visually about territory
Fragile territories / The ghosts of natural borders / The institutionalisation of geographical expertise / First example: pandemic territories / Second example: bodies, territory and entitlement / The Geneva Summit / Third example: borders as infrastructure / Walking as research method / Conclusion
3 / HOLDING THE LINE
Chapter 3 / Writing with comics
Making sense of complex geographies / Writing in the world, not about it / Creative and visual turns / Writing and reading comics / Making Along the Line / Ethics and comics in research
References
Images’ rights
Credits