Abolitionist Feminism: From Trans Justice to Radical Mothering

Ash Stephens Ash Stephens (he/him and they/them) is a Criminology, Law and Justice PhD candidate, and Black Studies and Gender and Women’s Studies concentrator at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research interests include critical race theory, gender-based violence, transgender studies, surveillance studies, critical prison studies, and prison industrial complex abolition and activism. The working title of his forthcoming dissertation project is "Concealed Threats: Gender-Policing and Surveillance of Trans, Gender Nonconforming, and Nonbinary People." The project explores the ways in which transgender, gender nonconforming, and nonbinary people in particular are surveilled and policed by various state actors. He is also a board member with the Transformative Justice Law Project and a 2020-2021 grantee of the Davis-Putter Scholarship Fund.

 

Nadine Naber received her PhD in Cultural Anthropology at the University of California, Davis. She is a Professor in the Gender and Women's Studies Program and the Global Asian Studies Program and holds an affiliation with the Department of Anthropology at the University of Illinois, Chicago. At UIC, she is the co-principal investigator of the Diaspora Cluster. She is a member of the executive committee of the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy and the steering committee of the Social Justice Initiative. Nadine came to the University of Illinois from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor where she co-founded Arab and Muslim American Studies (an Ethnic Studies unit within the Program in American Culture).  Nadine’s research interests lie at the intersections of transnational feminisms; women of color and queer of color theory; de-colonizing feminisms; empire studies; critical race studies; and Middle East Studies; and Arab American Studies. Drawing upon these fields, Nadine’s research theorizes the racialization of Arab and Muslim Americans within the contexts of empire and diaspora and has sought to answer the following question: How can Arab American Studies respond to Orientalism and tackle sexism, homophobia, and racism in ways that neither reinscribe Arab-bashing nor engage in Orientalism? Nadine’s current book in progress, Ending Violence is a transnational feminist ethnography focusing on feminist and queer activism in Beirut, Cairo, Chicago, and Detroit and the ways gendered and sexualized state violence in Arab homelands and diasporas magnify one another and take place within a similar spatial-temporal imperial context. Nadine is the author of Arab America: Gender, Cultural Politics, and Activism (NYU Press, 2012). She is co-editor of the books Race and Arab Americans (Syracuse University Press, 2008); Arab and Arab American Feminisms , winner of the Arab American Book Award 2012 (Syracuse University Press, 2010); and The Color of Violence (South End Press, 2006). Nadine is an editorial board member of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP); an advisory board member of the book series Expanding Frontiers: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexualitywith the University of Nebraska Press and the series Decolonizing Feminisms: Anti-racist and Transnational Praxis with the University of Washington Press. Nadine is a member of the collaborative research group, Arab Families Working Group; a board member of the Arab American Studies Association; and a national council member of the American Studies Association.