The beach confronts us with crucial issues of our times: migration, postcolonial power structures and mass tourism, climate change and pollution as well as gender and burkini swimwear controversies are examples of the numerous conflicts, discourses and practices that manifest within this liminal zone and that find their focal point there. The interdisciplinary volume understands ‘the beach’ as a (border) phenomenon in its own right and contributes to the new field of beach studies. It takes its point of departure from this changing image of ‘the beach’ to explore how its topographies, experiences and cultural significations are constructed through art, society and culture and how ‘the beach’ shapes poetics and aesthetic strategies in literature, film, photography, painting, music and performance. It aims to gain systematic insights from an analysis of historically and geographically specific varieties of the beach and to create a critical awareness for the contextual implications of contemporary discussions revolving around ‘the beach’.