Publication: Refugee Hosts

Screen Shot 2018-01-16 at 8.17.01 PMOver the past year, I’ve been working on a collaborative experimental film project with interlocutors who identify as LGBTQ+ and are asylum seekers or asylees. Our aim has been to take journeys through local “gaybourhoods” or “villages”–areas renown for being LGBT-friendly. We discuss what thoughts and memories these spaces evoke while moving through them, allowing our conversations to meander in step with, and in response to the built environment.

I shared initial findings at the recent EASA “Media and Mobilities” workshop, and am honored that our work has been featured as part of the “Representations of Displacement” series on the excellent AHCR-ESRC-sponsored Refugee Hosts project website. We’re in great company: entries in the series each address the politics and (un)intended consequences of particular tropes and mediums for representing experiences of displacement, and most offer compelling and creative alternatives in an effort to “disrupt humanitarian narratives”. The collection is vital reading for those of us engaged in creating and/or perpetuating images and imaginaries in this realm.

Curation: “Protest Matters!”

PM Flyer_Front : Simple PosterDuring the recent American Anthropological Association annual meetings in Washington, DC, I ran a “pop up people’s museum” entitled Protest Matters!  The temporary installation of protest objects (or, “matter”) was open Nov. 30 – Dec. 2, at local community cafe, The Potter’s House.

The Installation offered a timely opportunity for AAA attendees to come together with local activists and community members to explore the dynamic relationships between art and activism, materiality and affect, and creativity and community in the context of social justice activism. In the spirit of a “people’s museum” the contents were dictated by visitors, who chose objects to lend or donate to the archive, and wrote labels that included personal reflections as well as typical date/ origin/ material descriptions of items.

I’m happy to report that the project will live on in the form of a Virtual Museum, and even a 360 video that is VR headset compatible, allowing people to “revisit” the space in the future. You can find out more about the project, and how to contribute your own “protest matter” on the Protest Matters! website.

 

Introducing the “AnthroBites” podcast

Anthrobites_cover_artI’m proud and excited to share this new podcast series, which I have developed and am producing for the Society for Cultural Anthropology. Entitled “AnthroBites,” the series is a teaching tool at heart, featuring knowledgeable academics breaking down complex concepts, theories, and texts for a broad audience. I’ve been working on the concept for a while, and the slate is full for the coming months. Each episode is supplemented with further texts, media, and lesson plans on the Cultural Anthropology website, making for a useful resource for teachers and their students.

 

Episode #1 is “Scientific Racism” with Dr. Rachel Watkins. Listen here.

Episode #2 is “Sovereignty” with Dr. Yarimar Bonilla. Listen here.

Publication: Teen Vogue

Teen VogueMy latest journalistic article, published in Teen Vogue. While a different audience than I’m used to writing for, I’m quite heartened that there’s an appetite for feminist discourse analysis in a publication targeted at young women.

The editing process was also different from usual. I would not have made the same headlining/ standfirst choices, so it was instructive to see how my words were interpreted and presented by the Eds.

In the coming months, I’ll write up a more in-depth, scholarly analysis of the data I gathered for this piece (a surprisingly large dataset, so a lot to go through).

Call for Contributors: “Profit, Protest, and the Asylum Industry”

Edited volume. Proposal deadline: 31 July, 2017

[Click here for PDF]

Co-editors: Dr. Siobhán McGuirk, Georgetown University (sm3276@georgetown.edu) and Dr. Adrienne Pine, American University (pine@american.edu)

Overview: While the power to grant or deny asylum to people remains overwhelmingly within the purview of States,[1] we approach the actors and institutions forming around asylum systems internationally as “the asylum industry.” Our position engages analyses of commodification and industrialization in multiple, related spheres under neoliberal capitalism.

Call for Contributors: The proposed collection will unite international academics, activists, journalists, artists, and people directly impacted by the asylum industry to explore how current practices of asylum align with the neoliberal moment more broadly, and to present visions for alternative systems and processes. We are looking for contributions in a variety of forms, for example:

  • research papers (3,000-4,000 words)
  • journalistic articles (800-1,000 words)
  • photo-essays, data visualizations, political artwork, and other creative formats (e.g. diary entries; graphic novella; cartoons; poems, etc.).

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