Homeland Maternity and the Queer Possibilities of Kin

October 10, 3:00pm - 4:30pm
Mānoa Campus, Kuykendall 410

A public talk (the Joseph Keene Chadwick Memorial Lecture) by Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz, an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies and Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa. Fixmer-Oraiz is the author of Homeland Maternity: US Security Culture and the New Reproductive Regime (University of Illinois Press, 2019).

Contemporary motherhood is an intense site of contestation—at once a powerful form of currency and a target of unprecedented assault. Drawing on her recently published book, Homeland Maternity: US Security Culture and the New Reproductive Regime, Dr. Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz will trace the discursive alignments of motherhood and nation in the homeland security state, clarifying how the policing of reproduction is tethered to national security in times of perceived vulnerability. She will also highlight some of my current research, which turns to the possibilities of queering kin as a rejoinder to the vexations of homeland maternity, asking: If family is the dominant metaphor for the nation and motherhood frequently figured as its primary vehicle, how might we begin to narrate kin differently, in ways that invite more capacious and compassion understandings of belonging, community, and nation?


Ticket Information
free and open to the public

Event Sponsor
English, Mānoa Campus

More Information
S. Shankar, (808) 956-7619, engchair@hawaii.edu, Fixmer-Oraiz (PDF)

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