Feminist Emergencies: Imperial War and Gender Justice Movements from Palestine and Lebanon to Chicago and Detroit
This lecture explores the ways U.S.-led empire seeps into the lives and labor of feminist and queer activists of the Arab region and its diasporas. It focuses on the ways moments of intensive state violence, such as the Israeli bombing of Gaza and the U.S. government’s targeting of Palestinian American feminist Rasmea Odeh in 2014, have produced radical transformations within the analyses and visions of freedom among feminist and queer movements on the ground. Overall, this lecture offers a transnational feminist and queer analysis of how manifestations of U.S. empire “over there” (in the Arab region) and “over here” (among Arab American communities) magnify each other and are moving parts of the same imperial present.
Nadine Naber is Associate Professor in Gender and Women’s Studies, Asian American Studies, and Anthropology at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Nadine came to UIC from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor where she co-founded the Arab and Muslim American Studies program. She is author of Arab America: Gender, Cultural Politics, and Activism (NYU Press, 2012) and co-editor of the books Race and Arab Americans (Syracuse University Press, 2008); Arab and Arab American Feminisms , (Syracuse University Press, 2010); and The Color of Violence (South End Press, 2006).