Join Eithne Luibhéid and Karma R. Chávez for a conversation with contributors Ruben Zecena, Fadi Saleh, Myisha Arellanus, and Sasha Wijeyeratne to celebrate the release of Queer and Trans Migrations: Dynamics of Illegalization, Detention, and Deportation. Books can be purchased from BookWoman bookstore here: https://www.ebookwoman.com/book/9780252085239
Register here: http://bit.ly/QueerandTransMigrations
About the book:
Eithne Luibhéid and Karma R. Chávez’s edited collection provides a first-of-its-kind look at LGBTQ migrants and communities. The academics, activists, and artists in the volume center illegalization, detention, and deportation in national and transnational contexts, and examine how migrants and allies negotiate, resist, refuse, and critique these processes. The works contribute to the fields of gender and sexuality studies, critical race and ethnic studies, borders and migration studies, and decolonial studies.
Bridging voices and works from inside and outside of the academy, and international in scope, "Queer and Trans Migrations" illuminates new perspectives in the field of queer and trans migration studies.
Eithne Luibhéid is Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies. She holds a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from Berkeley, and her research focuses on the connections among queer lives, racialization processes, state immigration controls, and justice struggles. She served as the Director of the Institute for LGBT Studies at UA from 2007-2011. Luibhéid is the author of Pregnant on Arrival: Making the ‘Illegal’ Immigrant (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) and Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border (University of Minnesota Press, 2002). She is the editor of “Lives that Resist Telling: Migrant and Refugee Lesbians” (a special issue of Journal of Lesbian Studies, forthcoming 2020) and “Queer Migrations” (a special issue of GLQ, 2008). Luibhéid co-edited Queer and Trans Migrations: Dynamics of ‘Illegalization,’ Detention, and Deportation (University of Illinois Press, forthcoming 2020); A Global History of Sexuality (Wiley Blackwell, 2014); and Queer Migrations: Sexuality, Citizenship, and Border Crossings (University of Minnesota Press, 2005). She has held fellowships at the University of Texas, Austin and the University of Bristol.
Karma R. Chávez teaches, writes, and currently serves as chair in the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at the University of Texas at Austin where she also holds several affiliate faculty appointments. Working with colleagues across UT’s College of Liberal Arts, Chávez has been helping to create a new initiative called GRIDS (Gender, Race, Indigeneity, Disability, and Sexuality Studies), designed to foster relationships among those who study these and other systems of power. In the summer of 2019, along with several amazing colleagues of color and white allies, Chávez helped to found the new Michigan State University Press journal, Rhetoric, Politics, and Culture. She has published three co-edited volumes, including Text + Field: Innovations in Rhetorical Method (Penn State Press, 2016); a book of interviews called Palestine on the Air (University of Illinois Press, 2019); and a monograph titled Queer Migration Politics: Activist Rhetoric and Coalitional Possibilities (University of Illinois Press, 2013). She’s recently finished another monograph called The Borders of AIDS: Race, Quarantine, and Resistance (U of Washington Press, 2021).
Ruben Zecena is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Gender & Women's Studies at the University of Arizona. He is a formerly undocumented queer migrant from El Salvador. His dissertation traces the formation of queer and trans migrant imaginaries, showing how these imaginaries redefine social relations within and against the nation-state. His work appears in WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly, Constellations: A Cultural Rhetorics Publishing Space, and Border-Lines, among others. @mizruben
Fadi Saleh is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology at the University of Göttingen, Germany. In his PhD project, he traces the recent emergence of Syrian LGBTIQ refugees as a constituency in discourses around humanitarianism, asylum, and queerness. In addition to his academic research, Fadi continues to work with many LGBTIQ organizations in Europe and across the Middle East and North Africa region in a variety of consultancy, research, training, and advocacy capacities.
Myisha Arellanus is a muralist, educator, digital and scenic painter based in Los Angeles, CA. Since 2010 she has designed, painted, and led multiple private and public murals. Myisha’s approach to public art is rooted in community engagement leading them to collaborate with various organizations and non-profits across Los Angeles. Myisha uses aging and conservation techniques creatively as elements of storytelling. Their experience as a migrant from Mexico City raised in California, has resulted in a painting style not too easily defined. Myisha’s studio work depicts images of nature alongside political themes, portraits, and reimagined sites resulting in a view of an alternate reality form.
Sasha Wijeyeratne is the former organizing director at the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance, working to build the power of LGBTQ API com-munities toward a world where all queer and trans people of color can thrive. Sasha is currently the executive director of CAAAV: Organizing Asian Commu-nities, organizing working-class Asian immigrants in Chinatown and Queens in New York City. Sasha has been part of a number of grassroots and national organizing campaigns and deeply believes in the power of organizing to win impossible battles. They are confident that we have what we need to transform ourselves and our world and that working-class immigrant and people of color organizing will get us free. Sasha has also been part of a variety of organizing and political education projects, including: South Asian Youth Movement, No Dane County Jail Coalition, VigilantLove, Asians for Black Lives, DC Desi Summer, Queer South Asian National Network, and more.
