This introductory Ethnic Studies course examines how U.S. processes of racial formation and gendering are related to multiple transnational circulations – of commodities, bodies, labor, capital, knowledge, and culture. We interrogate the material and ideological work of borders – particularly nation-state borders, but also the borders and boundaries of racial and ethnic categories, gendered and sexualized identities, languages, forms of labor, and disciplinary categories of knowledge. Also explored are the many ways in which such borders are variously resisted, contested, transgressed, transcended, and transformed over time.