Steinhardt doctoral candidate, Michelle Pfeifer, along with Billy Holzberg (King's College London) and Anouk Madörin (University of Potsdam), co-edited a special issue of the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies titled “The Sexual Politics of Border Control.” The project was inspired by the Sexuality & Borders conference held at the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication in Spring 2019.
By bringing together queer scholarship on borders and migration with the rich archive of feminist, Black, Indigenous and critical border perspectives, we highlight how the heteronormativity of the border intersects with the larger dynamics of racial capitalism, imperialism, and settler colonialism, reproductive inequalities, and the containment of contagion, disease, and virality.
This special issue conceptualizes sexuality as a method of bordering and examines how sexuality operates as a key site for the containment and regulation of movement. It further includes a conversation between Miriam Ticktin and Alyosxa Tudor on sexuality and borders in pandemic and right-wing times and an afterword by MCC Professor Radha Hegde on the urgency of thinking about sexual border politics today.
The full special issue can be viewed here and you can download the introduction for free (available for two months).