THE VIOLENCE SEMINAR at UMD
The Violence Seminar is a webinar series organized by Dr. Andrea M. López, funded by the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences Edward McKJohnson Jr. Endowed Fellowship at the University of Maryland. The purpose of this webinar series is to hold space for discussion among scholars and frontline providers/community organizers whose work engages with violence in its multiple forms and how this violence intersects histories of exclusion, racism and white supremacy, settler colonialism, heteropatriarchy, and punitive governance of marginalized communities, among other things. Invited presenters are those whose work centers the experiences and epistemologies of the communities most impacted by violence in its multiple forms and those whose work theorizes violence as a means towards resistance, justice, liberation, and dissolution of violent systems and structures. Each seminar will also provide a space for presenters to dialogue with junior scholars, students, and people who have been historically excluded from academia to discuss pathways forward in their future work on violence.
Upcoming Seminar:
Prophylactic Violence:
COVID-19, Title 42, and the Rise of the Homeland Biosecurity State
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued the Title 42 order, allowing border agents to immediately expel migrants and asylum seekers attempting to cross into the U.S. Ostensibly aimed at defending against the spread of COVID-19, Title 42 dramatically bolstered the Trump Administration’s crackdown on asylum. As a public health order emerging from the CDC implemented with the support of the Department of Homeland Security, Title 42 has merged the prerogatives of each agency and ushered in the development of what I refer to as the Homeland Biosecurity State. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Tijuana, Mexico in 2019 to 2021, this presentation will examine how Title 42, a purportedly prophylactic policy kept in place by the Biden Administration, has compounded harm and vulnerability among the detained and expelled.
Carlos Martinez MPH
PhD Candidate, UCSF & UC Berkeley Joint Program in Medical Anthropology
February 25, 2022, 1pm EST on zoom.
Open to the public, but registration is required: link coming soon!
