“Translocations: Travel, Migration, and Sexuality”
April 29-30, 2010
This workshop showcased recent scholarship that has placed sexuality in the foreground when considering how bodies and practices move across the borders of nation states. The goal was to explore the relationship between sexuality and a range of other topics, including international migration, tourism, and labor. We also considered the connections between transnational movement and sexual citizenship and rights.
| Special guest speakers | Northwestern University speakers | Northwestern Ph.D student commentators |
| Elizabeth Bernstein, Barnard College Mark Padilla, University of Michigan Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Brown University Jyoti Puri, Simmons College |
Héctor Carrillo (Sociology and Gender Studies) Steven Epstein (Sociology and the Humanities) |
Theo Greene (Sociology) Nisa Goksel (Sociology) Jeff Kosbie (Sociology & Law) Kareem Khubchandani (Performance Studies) Melissa Minor Peters (Anthropology) Jaimie Morse (Sociology) Ricardo Sánchez Cárdenas (Sociology) James ZarsaDiaz (History) |
This workshop was sponsored by the Gender Studies Program, the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of Sociology, the Latina and Latino Studies Program, the Program in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the Asian American Studies Program, and the Colloquium on Ethnicity and Diaspora. Professor Parreñas’s lecture was made possible by the generous support of the Edith Kreeger Wolf endowment.
From Gender Studies Director Ann Orloff’s article in Gender:dynamic: The Newsletter of the Gender Studies Program at Northwestern University (Spring 2010):
Our crowning event of the Spring quarter was a two-day workshop, “Translocations: Travel, Migration, and Sexuality,” April 29-30, organized by two of our new faculty, Professors Hector Carrillo and Steve Epstein. The workshop featured a keynote address by Edith Kreeger Wolf Distinguished Visiting Professor Rhacel Salazar Parrenas, Professor of American Civilization and Sociology at Brown University, entitled “Cultures of Flirtation: Sexual Work and Moral Boundaries of Filipina Migrant Hostesses in Tokyo,” in which Parrenas described her research findings on a group of migrant women often assumed to be “trafficked,” but which she finds inhabiting a more complex range of positions, a few coerced but many others more freely chosen. Other presenters included Elizabeth Bernstein, Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies and Sociology at Barnard College; Mark Padilla, Assistant Professor of Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of Michigan; Jyoti Puri, Professor of Sociology at Simmons College; Steven Epstein, Professor of Sociology and John C. Schaffer Professor in the Humanities at Northwestern and our own Hector Carrillo. Among the many themes explored in this two-day workshop were sexuality and citizenship among Mexican male immigrants, transgender citizenship, the interaction of sexuality and the law in Dominican tourism zones. Northwestern Gender Studies affiliated graduate students were the commentators for each session, and many other students participated in the events by attending the conference and meeting with Professor Parrenas.