Immigration, as crisis and in times of crisis, routinely cycles through as a news topic of the day. This talk will explore the story of immigration and citizenship, and the ways that race, gender, and class shape national belonging and identity. Using Haiti, Cuba, and the United States as primary triangulated sites of examination, I will argue that citizenship in all of its forms is often rhetorically, representationally, and legally negated by race, particularly blackness. Further, I will explore the ways that media representations of blackness impact one’s ability to travel across national and social borders and become a citizen.
Manoucheka Celeste is an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida with a joint appointment at the Center for Gender, Sexualities, and Women’s Studies Research and the African American Studies Program. Her research centers on representational constructions of race, gender, class, and nation, and processes of identity formation, with a specific emphasis on citizenship narratives surrounding immigration, tourism, immigrants, and black women. Her regional focus is the Caribbean, particularly Haiti. Her most recent publications include her first book Race, Gender, and Citizenship in the African Diaspora: Travelling Blackness (Routledge 2017) and the article “Entertaining mobility: the racialized and gendered nation in House Hunters International” in Feminist Media Studies (2016). She holds a Ph.D. in Communication and Graduate Certificate in Feminist Studies from the University of Washington.