The Armed Border: Gender, Sexuality, Biopolitics, Violence
Friday, October 28, 12:00-2:00, Student Community Center, Multipurpose Room
Mona Bhan is Associate Professor of Anthropology at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. She has been 
conducting ethnographic fieldwork in the occupied territory of Kashmir since 1999. Her book entitled Counterinsurgency, Democracy, and the Politics of Identity in India: From Warfare to Welfare? examined the ways in which the logic of “incipient terrorism” guides Indian military’s counterinsurgency operations among border communities who are seen as potential threats to Indian security and sovereignty. In addition, she has published articles on gender and racial tourism, representational democracy, climate change in the Himalayas, border subjectivities. She recently finished a co-authored manuscript with an archeologist, tentatively titled “Climate without Nature: A Critical Anthropology of the Anthropocene.” The work analyzes the implications and politics of the designation Anthropocene and the role of Anthropology in historicizing and politicizing climate change.
Sayak Valencia is a professor in the Deparment of Cultural Studies at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (Tijua
na, México). She is author of Capitalismo Gore (Paidós, México, 2016/ Melusina, Barcelona, 2010), and of numerous articles including “Tijuana Cuir” (Denmark, 2014), “Capitalismo gore y necropolítica en México contemporáneo” (UAM, Madrid, 2012), “Capitalismo gore: narcomáquina y performance de género” (HEMI-NYU, 2011). Her research interests are: Feminism/transfeminism, decolonial and queer/cuir perspectives, bio and necropolitics and border issues.
You are invited to read the following articles by our invited speakers prior to the event:
Mona Bhan: “Morality and Martyrdom: Dams, Dharma, and the Cultural Politics of Work in Indian-Occupied Kashmir”
Sayak Valencia: “Tijuana Cuir”