This lecture explores the ways U.S.-led empire seeps into the lives and labor of feminist and queer activists of the Arab region and its diasporas. It focuses on the ways moments of intensive state violence, have produced radical transformations within the analyses and visions of freedom among feminist and queer movements on the ground. Overall, this lecture offers a transnational feminist and queer analysis of how manifestations of U.S. empire “over there” (in the Arab region) and “over here” (among Arab American communities) magnify each other and are moving parts of the same imperial present.

Nadine Naber is Associate Professor in Gender and Women's Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago. She is co-founder of the Arab and Muslim American Studies program at UM, Ann Arbor; author of Arab America: Gender, Cultural Politics, and Activism (NYU Press, 2012); and co-editor of the Race and Arab Americans (Syracuse University Press, 2008); Arab and Arab American Feminisms (Syracuse University Press, 2010); and The Color of Violence (South End Press, 2006). Nadine is a scholar-activist working with the Rasmea Odeh defense committee and she is co-producing two community-based publication: “Towards the Sun” (writings by Arab immigrant and refugee women) and “Social Justice Parenting: An Activist Workbook.” Nadine is currently a fellow with the Open Society Foundation working with the Institute for Women’s Studies at Birzeit University and an expert author for the United Nations Economic and Social Commission of West Asia.



Sponsored by: Arab and Muslim American Studies and the Border Collective Rackham Interdisciplinary Workshop