CALL FOR PROPOSALS:
Politics of Movement: Racialization, Religion, and Migration
Whether discussing the management of refugees by nation-states, Brexit, the ever-expanding carceral state, the fugitivity of unarmed Black bodies captured on film fleeing the police, or the organized assemblage of citizens protesting the neoliberal regimes, one could argue that the problem of Movement is one of the most pressing themes of the 21st century.In the aftermath of the election of Donald Trump and the Supreme Court’s reinstatement of the international travel ban, questions about religion, race, and migration have moved center stage. The racialization of Islam and Islamophobia have become transnational phenomena in the politics of secular nation states. Elsewhere the (necro)political aftermath of Hurricane Maria and the mudslides in Sierra Leone have put into relief the politics ofmobility when natural disasters displace thousands. The rise of carceral regimes and police states raise questions about the afterlives of slavery and the continual confinements that render Black Life precarious. Taken together these challenges invoke new and important questions about national security, immigration policy, the logic of coloniality, antiBlack violence, secular law, border patrol, and sovereignty.
The Politics of Movement: Racialization, Religion, and Migration graduate conference will bring students and faculty together to facilitate an interdisciplinary exploration of the multiplex ways of theorizing the politics of movement—broadly defined in the US and abroad. This not only includes various forms of mobility—migration, diasporas, refugees, settlements, travels, transportations, etc.—but also the often racialized political techniques that restrict, contain, indoctrinate, limit, manage, or move people to create various forms of im/mobility—dislocation/removal, borders, prisons and confinements, ghettos and reservations, militaries and policing, colonies and camps, etc.
The conference will feature keynote speaker
Dr. Darryl Li (Anthropology, University of Chicago)
Organizers of the Politics of Movement invite graduate student papers from a wide range of disciplines that explore issues such as (but not limited to):
- Diaspora
- Transnationalism, global politics
- Ethics
- Gender/Sexuality
- The Politics of Religion/ Political Theology
- Secularism, secularity, secularization
- Refugees
- Undocumented, “Illegal”, and “Alien”
- Settlement, indigeneity, settler colonialism
- Militarism, Policing
- Empire
- Political economy
- Citizenship
- Race/racialization/ racism
- Afro-Pessimism/Afrofuturism
- Mass incarceration, carcerality
- Solitary confinement/Carcerality, torture
- Surveillance, national security
- Necropolitics
- Coloniality of Space
- Climate change
- Law
- Performance
Deadlines and Funding
Please submit an abstract of your proposed paper (maximum 300 words) to buffett.northwestern.edu/programs/grad-conference
The deadline for submission is December 1, 2017. Acceptance notification is January 15, 2018.
The Buffett Institute will provide hotel accommodations and will subsidize travel costs (fully for US-based graduate students and partially for international students)
Co-organizers:
James Hill, PhD Student (Religious Studies)
Hafsa Oubou, PhD Student (Anthropology)
Matt Smith, PhD Student (Religious Studies)
Contact Email:
