Elif Sari is the Martha LA McCain Postdoctoral Fellow at the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology (2021) at Cornell University with a graduate minor in Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies. Sari’s scholarship lies at the intersections of transnational sexualities, migration, asylum, waiting, humanitarianism, and queer and critical race theory, with a specific focus on the Middle East and its diasporas. Drawing on her field research and community collaborations with Iranian LGBTQ refugees in Turkey awaiting resettlement to the U.S. and Canada, Sari is currently working on her book manuscript, which offers an engaged ethnography of transnational queer and trans asylum and explores the relationship among migration, gender/sexuality, and waiting.
Event Overview
In this discussion, we use feminist and queer lenses to analyze these movements and containments. We explore how gender and sexuality shape refuge, asylum, and detention; how feminist and queer standpoints illuminate the structures that produce and sustain global apartheid; and how refugees and their allies resist these forces.
This event is co-sponsored by the Cornell Migrations Initiative.
What You'll Learn
- The main trends in contemporary asylum politics, including global border closures, refugee waiting, detention, and protracted insecurity
- How the U.S. asylum detention system operates
- The ways in which gender and sexuality shape migration, asylum, and detention
- How feminist and queer perspectives help us better understand refugee and asylum politics to challenge structures of incarceration, xenophobia, nationalism, and global apartheid
- What feminist, gender, and sexuality studies can learn from contemporary refugee movements, politics, and epistemologies
- The avenues for joining feminist and queer studies with abolitionist movements against incarceration and border closures
Speakers
Prameela Kottapalli (she/her) is a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences majoring in FGSS and the College Scholar Program, where her scholarship focuses on mental health and bodily autonomy within the U.S. immigrant detention system. She spearheads the Cornell Anti-Detention Alliance, an organization affiliated with the FGSS program and Justice for Migrant Families of Western New York that engages in direct services and advocacy with immigrants detained at the Buffalo federal detention facility. Kottapalli has worked on a number of community-based campaigns advocating for asylum seekers and refugee women, and she has led advocacy and research initiatives for Freedom for Immigrants, Justice for Migrant Families, and Immigrant Justice Corps. Her research and community work have been shaped by her learning inside the classroom as an FGSS student and her experiences outside the classroom as the daughter of immigrants.
Saida Hodžić is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies at Cornell University. The author of “The Twilight of Cutting: African Activism and Life after NGOs,” Professor Hodžić is currently writing a book titled “Affective Encounters: Humanitarian Afterlives of War and Violence” and developing a public-facing podcast called “Refugees Know Things.”
Elif Sari is the Martha LA McCain Postdoctoral Fellow at the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology (2021) at Cornell University with a graduate minor in Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies. Sari’s scholarship lies at the intersections of transnational sexualities, migration, asylum, waiting, humanitarianism, and queer and critical race theory, with a specific focus on the Middle East and its diasporas. Drawing on her field research and community collaborations with Iranian LGBTQ refugees in Turkey awaiting resettlement to the U.S. and Canada, Sari is currently working on her book manuscript, which offers an engaged ethnography of transnational queer and trans asylum and explores the relationship among migration, gender/sexuality, and waiting.
Prameela Kottapalli (she/her) is a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences majoring in FGSS and the College Scholar Program, where her scholarship focuses on mental health and bodily autonomy within the U.S. immigrant detention system. She spearheads the Cornell Anti-Detention Alliance, an organization affiliated with the FGSS program and Justice for Migrant Families of Western New York that engages in direct services and advocacy with immigrants detained at the Buffalo federal detention facility. Kottapalli has worked on a number of community-based campaigns advocating for asylum seekers and refugee women, and she has led advocacy and research initiatives for Freedom for Immigrants, Justice for Migrant Families, and Immigrant Justice Corps. Her research and community work have been shaped by her learning inside the classroom as an FGSS student and her experiences outside the classroom as the daughter of immigrants.
Saida Hodžić is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies at Cornell University. The author of “The Twilight of Cutting: African Activism and Life after NGOs,” Professor Hodžić is currently writing a book titled “Affective Encounters: Humanitarian Afterlives of War and Violence” and developing a public-facing podcast called “Refugees Know Things.”
- View slide #1
- View slide #2
- View slide #3
View Keynote by completing the form below.
You're Registered!