UA News

Sponsored by Confluence: Center for Creative Inquiry and the Institute for LGBT Studies.

All events will be held at the Student Union in the Rincon Room and are free and open to the public.

Recent theoretical work in academic circles investigates the relationship between borders, biometrics, security and citizenship, suggesting the need to better frame new ways in which borders, bodies and the state are being realigned and represented in cultural artifacts and political imaginaries.

In this context, notions such as virtual borders and ‘datamigrants’ take a central role. In addition, other related projects explore the ways in which the image and the cultural representation of the migrant becomes part (or not) of national discourses of securing the State. These writings also show how this image is being rearticulated. This symposium seeks to initiate a dialogue about the above repositioning from an interdisciplinary cultural studies perspective, focusing on two main aspects: the reconfiguration of state power into new immaterial forms such as virtual and biometric borders and how this affects bodies, rights and jurisdictions, and the impact of this reconfiguration via processes of disembodiment and de-territorialization in the representation of migrant subjects and transborder communities.

Wednesday, Nov. 9:

• Noon-1:30 p.m. Brown Bag with Joseph Pugliese 
• 2-3 p.m. Panel - "Transgendering the Border: The Somatechnics of Gender Normativity and Deviance" with Micha Cárdenas, Toby Beauchamp, and Nick Clarkson 
• 4-6 p.m. Lecture - Joseph Pugliese, of Macquarie University in Australia speaks on “Biometrics’ Embodied Technologies of the Border” 

Thursday, Nov. 10:

• Noon-1:30 p.m. Brown Bag with Benjamin Muller, who will discuss his book "Security, Risk and the Biometric State: Governing Borders and Bodies" 
• 2-3:30 p.m. Panel - "Virtual Boundaries and the Biometric State" 
• 4-6 p.m. Lecture - Benjamin Muller, of Western Ontario University in Canada speaks on “Unscripted Crossings: Borders, Biometrics and the 'Unknown Unknowns' "

For more information, contact Lisa Logan at the Institute for LGBT Studies, 509-413-9774 or ljlogan@email.arizona.edu, or Maria Aguayo from Confluence: Center for Creative Inquiry, 520-621-5137 or telles@email.arizona.edu.