Editorial

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"Border Crossing and the Limits of Identity," our conference theme for 2002, produced many provocative presentations, with student papers and creative readings (and performances!) coming from the departments and programs of Anthropology, Film Studies, History, American Studies, and Creative Writing, to name a few. Here we present both creative work and scholarly expositions as a means of celebrating the exchange of ideas between undergraduate and graduate student members of the university community and the facilitation of interdisciplinary discourse -- these are the goals of the Y|X Conference and the broader initiative, which includes the bi-annual Xchanges online journal.

At the conference, held on March 29, 2002, at WSU's Student Center Building, various interpretations of the theme "Border Crossing and the Limits of Identity" were presented by over 55 conference participants. Students aimed to examine the different types of borders, be they cultural, physical, economic, or otherwise, that are crossed daily and how the crossing of such borders affects interpretations and definitions of personal and social identity. Students examined the sometimes clear demarcations between communities in the Detroit metropolitan area, the ways in which lines are drawn and crossed pedagogically in the composition classroom, the revisionary and deliberate transgression of filmic and generic borders in the Dogme 95 film movement, and immigration as an often quintessential crossing of national and personal identity borders - to name but a small sampling of conference paper topics. You will find in Issue 3 of Xchanges five scholarly and creative pieces representative of the talents of WSU scholars and the diversity of themes examined at the 2002 Y|X Conference.

Each year the Y|X Project produces two issues of Xchanges - the Winter issue, published in March, and the Fall issue, published in August. The Winter issue is comprised of essays submitted in response to an open Call for Papers on a specified theme. The Winter issue, then, features scholarly and creative work from talented graduate student scholars from America and abroad; each essay in the Winter issue is reviewed by knowledgeable scholars in the area with which the essay is concerned. The Winter issue is a blind, peer-reviewed journal and as such, the papers included demonstrate the highest rigor. The Winter 2002 issue, "American Originals, American Adaptations," is archived on this site. The Call for Papers for the upcoming 2003Winter issue, Issue 4, will be available here as well.

The Fall issue of each year is the proceedings from the previous March's Y|X Conference. The journal issues and the annual conference are made possible through the support of the Wayne State University American Studies Program and the support of the Rushton Endowment, an endowment devoted to the exchange of ideas between undergraduate students throughout the university and within the American Studies Program with the goal of spreading the benefits of an interdisciplinary education.

We hope you enjoy this Fall 2002 issue of Xchanges. The essays and creative work presented here are provocative and wide-ranging in theme, yet each piece exhibits the disparate ways in which we might examine the notion of "Border Crossing and the Limits of Identity." Please look for the CFP for Issue 4 in November and for the journal issue in March. Next year's Y|X Conference will be held on March 28, 2003, and we will announce the theme on this site as well. Thank you for supporting the Y|X Conference and the Xchanges journal.