Sharita Gruberg, Keynote Speech, image by Gloria A. Negrete-Lopez
Juan Ochoa, presenter, image by Gloria A. Negrete-Lopez
Alejandra Ramírez, presenter, image by Gloria A. Negrete-Lopez
Josue Saldivar (left) with Sharita Gruberg
Community dinner post-conference
This conference brings together graduate students from across UA departments and disciplines. Panels and a keynote speaker will center scholarship that explores how sexuality, gender, race, class, religion, geopolitics and other hierarchies comprise sites for struggle and possible transformation of current immigration systems.This conference aims to challenge the everyday violence of border militarization, travel bans, expanding detention, and larger power structures affecting the most marginalized amongst our communities.
Queer Migrations: Homeland Insecurities, Violence, and Belonging (2014, University of Arizona - Tucson).
The conference brings together activists, scholars, students, archivists, artists, and other interested groups in order to: Center queer migrant lives, experiences, cultures, struggles, and transformations; Connect queer migration experiences with contemporary struggles against (neo)colonialism, global capitalism, slavery, racism and (hetero)sexism, war, the prison industrial complex, and bio- and necro-politics; Make these connections at different scales (including local, regional, national, and transnational), and across different time periods; Problematize the idea that state border controls create safety, security and order, and instead explore how they legitimize the abandonment of racialized, queered, poor populations to precarious conditions and premature death; Ensure that nation-state migration and citizenship policies are addressed both on their own terms and in relation to wider scales, histories, and processes; Consider arguments and strategies that don’t involve winning privileges at someone else’s expense, and that seek to build bridges between struggles; Assess the current state of queer migration scholarship and activism, and imagine/envision future directions.
Sexualities and Homeland (In)Securities Conference (2006, University of Arizona - Tucson).
The Institute for LGBT Studies hosted a national conference that critically examined how sexual politics has become a critical terrain for local, national and global “homeland security” strategies. The presenters addressed how struggles for sexual, racial, gender, economic, and cultural justice have been affected and reconfigured as a result.