Join us ONLINE for a book discussion with author Barbara Sostaita, and scholars from New York University, The City University of New York, and The New School!
In Sanctuary Everywhere, Barbara Andrea Sostaita reimagines practices of sanctuary along the U.S.-Mexico border in order to explore the possibilities for radical fugitivity in the face of militarized border enforcement. After the 2016 presidential election, churches, universities, cities, and even states began declaring themselves sanctuaries. Sostaita proposes that these calls for expanded sanctuary are insufficient when dealing with the everyday workings of immigration enforcement. Through fieldwork in migrant clinics, shelters, and the Sonoran Desert, Sostaita demonstrates that, as a sacred practice, sanctuary cannot be fixed in any one destination or mandate. She turns to those working to create sanctuary on the move, from a deported nurse offering medical care on the border to incarcerated migrant women denying rules on touch in detention facilities to collectives set up to honor those who died crossing the border.
Presented by the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at The New School for Social Research and The New School.
Barbara Sostaita is a formerly undocumented writer and scholar of migration and religion. She grew up in the U.S. South, the daughter of a baker and evangelical minister—learning from a young age the importance of ritual in the lives of migrants. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor in Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago. Her book, Sanctuary Everywhere: The Fugitive Sacred in the Sonoran Desert, documents moments of care and intimacy on the migrant trail.
Ángeles Donoso Macaya is a feminist immigrant educator, scholar and writer from Santiago, Chile, based in New York City. She is Professor of Latin American Visual Studies in the Ph.D. Program in Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Cultures at The CUNY Graduate Center, and Professor of Spanish at BMCC/CUNY.
Michelle Castañeda holds a Ph.D. from Brown University's Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, an M.A. in Dance Theatre from Trinity Laban, London, and a B.A. in Political Science from Yale University. Michelle’s research and teaching interests focus on migration, Latino/a and Latin American studies, dance, and critical legal studies.
Alexandra Délano Alonso is Professor of Politics and Global Studies at The New School and Eugene M. Lang Professor for Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring. As a migration scholar, her earlier writing examines the Mexican state’s relations with its diaspora in the United States and, more recently, the shifting forms of agency and solidarity created by and for migrants at the margins of the state, both in Mexico and in the United States.
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