This event is presented in collaboration with the Institute for International and Regional Studies National Resource Center (IRIS NRC), the Center for the Humanities, and the Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian Studies Program (LACIS) at UW-Madison.
Karma Chavez is Bobby and Sherri Patton Professor of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies and Chair, Mexican American and Latina/o Studies. Their scholarship is primarily informed by queer of color theory and women of color feminism. Their work emphasizes the rhetorical practices of groups marginalized within existing power structures, but they also attend to rhetoric produced by powerful institutions and actors about marginalized folks and the systems that oppress them (e.g., immigration system, prisons etc.). Methodologically, they are a rhetorical critic who utilizes textual and field-based methods. They are interested in studying social movement building, activist rhetoric, and coalitional politics.
Their first book, Queer Migration Politics: Activist Rhetoric and Coalitional Possibilities, which examines coalition building at the many intersections of queer and immigration politics in the contemporary United States, was published in 2013. Palestine on the Air, a compilation of interviews conducted while hosting a radio show on WORT-FM in Madison, Wisconsin, related to Palestine was released in 2019. Their latest book, The Borders of AIDS: Race, Quarantine, and Resistance, was released from the University of Washington Press in June 2021 and centers citizenship and immigration status to tell a story about how HIV/AIDS became an opportunity for powerful people in the US to enact “alienizing logic” against migrants, Black folks, and others. It also shows how people fought back.
They have co-edited four volumes, Queer and Trans Migrations: Dynamics of Illegalization, Detention, and Deportation (with Eithne Luibhéid, U of Illinois Press), Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies (with the Feminist Editorial Collective: other members are: Kyla Wazana Tompkins, Aren Z. Aizura, Aimee Bahng, Mishuana Goeman, and Amber Jamilla Musser, NYU Press), Standing in the Intersection: Feminist Voices, Feminist Practices in Communication Studies (with Cindy L. Griffin, SUNY Press) and Text + Field: Innovations in Rhetorical Method (Penn State University Press).
They are at work on a collection of essays about our community-university collaborations in Madison, Wisconsin called, After Ferguson: Black, Queer, Feminist Experiments Against Police and Jails with M. Adams, as well as finishing a book of creative non-fiction essays on race, belonging, and the midwestern United States. In addition to their research, they are a regular host of the Latino Studies podcast, LatinXperts. They co-host Feminist Keywords, the podcast companion to Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies. On occasion, they serve as host on A Public Affair on Madison, Wisconsin’s community radio station, WORT-FM.