In 2020 news broke about forced sterilizations performed to immigrant women in a for profit ICE detention center. Although alarming and disturbing, forced sterilizations in the US and other countries in the Global North and the Global South have been common and a constant in the establishment of a modern nation, justifying this on the basis of eugenics, overpopulation, environmental concerns among other fascist-like arguments. Since forced sterilization creates a notion of “removal of potentiality” either a possibility of having neurodivergent offspring, or to reproduce communities of color, as well as poor communities, all seen as potential threats to the ethnic purity of the nation-state. I argue that reproductive freedom needs to be seen beyond a common argument of an individual right, but more so of a sense of what the body as “living theory” represents in front of the state. The racialized, disabled, and poor body is a constant threat to the notion of purity and belonging for the imperial and settler state project.

The conceptualization of body-territory was born in the struggle of Indigenous and racialized women in the Global South. Specifically, I rely on the notion that bodies are “living and historical territories that allude to a political interpretation, where wounds, memories, knowledge, desires, individual and common dreams live” (Cruz Hernandez 2021) Hence, the body and the territory that it represents can’t be separated, the immigrant body is wounded as a direct attack to its “place of belonging” making the body a geographical site of resistance.

Women play a prominent role in the agricultural sector in Turkey, yet their visions, experiences and practices concerning the land have been often overlooked by the capitalist visions prioritizing short-term economic profit to be gained from the land and patriarchal hierarchies in access to land. Specifically, in the Eastern Black Sea region of Turkey, hazelnut farming has been a ubiquitous activity for generations, until recent years where it began to leave its place to farming of other products and other sources of income following the decline of returns. Repercussions of this process of transition from a product that has become so ingrained in the everyday lives, landscapes and livelihood of the region needs to be discovered. We attempt at such discovery through feminist political ecology in relation to women’s ways of knowing/relating to/existing with the natural environment, in which hazelnut occupies the focal point. Our question came out of a broader feminist ethnographic research that included filming a documentary by the feminist psychologist about the freedom dreams of women in Turkey. We specifically bring our attention to a family comprising intergenerational women in hazelnut farming to uncover the ways in which they relate to the land in the Black Sea region. Our analysis complicates the sustenance-economic relationship narrative and reveals the ways in which older women in the family perceive the land as an extension of themselves. It illuminates the affective, sensory and phenomenological ways in which women relate to the land through tales, folk stories and songs and establish a reciprocity of caring labor and productivity. Our research contributes to theoretical and empirical research grounded in the Black Sea region, and uncovers the dynamics of hazelnut farming beyond financial gain and the indigenous ways of embodiment.

Gendered experiences in migration occur along a continuum (origin-, transit-, and destination country): gender dynamics might premise the reason for migration but might also affect experiences along migratory routes and in destination countries. Along this continuum, women, girl, LGBTQIA+, and gender diverse migrants face heightened risks of marginalization, vulnerabilities, and violence. At the same time, migrants remain largely left out of policy processes that affect their lives. To address this gap between lived experiences and policy, the Gender-Migration Index (GMI) provides a tool for stakeholders to ensure gender-responsiveness and migrant-inclusion in policy.

The GMI centers the lived experiences of women, girl, LGBTQIA+, and gender diverse migrants by strengthening civil society engagement in international review processes. The Index is based on an indicator system that ensures gender-responsiveness and migrant-inclusion in benchmarking policy, particularly in regards to monitoring and evaluation. Through a multi-stakeholder approach, the GMI shrinks spaces between migrant communities and governing bodies and promotes dialogue and information-sharing by facilitating feedback and consultation mechanisms. Premised on a paradigm to democratize knowledge production in policy, the GMI emphasizes participation and action by members of communities affected by the research – and policy – namely migrant communities and organizations working with migrant communities.

In this presentation, we will introduce the GMI as a participatory approach towards policy monitoring and evaluation. We will provide an overview of how the Index works, paying specific attention to our methodology and indicator system, and will offer insights on the GMI’s versatile applicability for distinct research purposes.

As Bruno Latour suggests, objects sometimes have an agency that has social force in our lives. His theory of the quasi-object seems apparent with our smartphones which have become an additional appendage to our bodies; in the 21st century, they have agency in our lives and, perhaps without them we have less. 

In Objectionable Objects, I show how literacy artifacts reveal the homophobic forces of the 20th-century, and how Queer responses countermanded them. While my research has examined teacher training materials, police cadet textbooks, and syndicated advice columns as textual social influencers, this presentation focuses upon young adult (YA) sex education books published from the 1940s to the 1990s, a time period rife with etiologies, legislations, and pathologizations of homosexuality. The (mis)information that young people read and the affect those homophobic quasi-objects triggered in them attempted to conserve homonormative ideologies of the world; however, they didn’t always have the shaming effects intended. This presentation shares examples of YA sex ed manuals as well as the literacy labors that Queer literates interpolated to say “that’s not quite right.”

These circulatory systems from homophobic perspectives to Queer counter-interpretations to reactionary heteronormative responses explicitly exhibit the dynamics of these socio-sexual political struggles. These hindsights into quasi-Queer literacy objects offer insights into our current era when homophobic forces once again want to control the powers of literacy to restrict social change. Their strategies of book banning and classroom discourse control demand our attention about literacy’s role in our socio-political world-making.

When we look at public areas as various physical and digital queer and sex-positive spaces; what are the different vernaculars, gestures, scents, sounds and colors that we use to communicate with one another? How do these define, evolve, intersect, and influence on a personal and cultural level in the public realm, and the tools that we use? This line of inquiry finds its base with Paul B. Preciado’s questions around gender non-confirming; it also further builds on artistic research that exists physically and digitally, as it relates to contemporary intimacy through technology and fluid ways of being. We’ll dive into the process and production of self-made sex toys, in depth theoretical, and engaging work, through social design, projection mapping installations and performances, that interweave pleasure playgrounds and objects, set in public or private domains.

This 15-minute presentation proposal is built on the theme of this conference and addresses the multifaceted relationships between technology, gender, sexuality, commerce, and society. It’s connected to our newly started research group at the SexTech Lab, my long-term research into physical and digital pleasure spaces with BDSM practitioners /sex coaches/ sex workers / queer and trans community and collective video work. 

As part of this research, we will investigate pleasure activism as strategies of joy, a path that empowers many outside the mainstream to enact change. As the base of multidisciplinary installations, as a medium to be able to share personal stories from social artistic research, as a tool of carefully regulated elaborations after long-term research that combines various disciplines. With these interactive series, we aim for a promiscuous, intersectional thinking of contemporary and future perspectives on global social issues that fracture the dominant models of production, image and bodies.

Digital representation is often framed as a tool for visibility and inclusion, but hypervisibility can just as easily become a site of surveillance, erasure, or flattening, particularly for trans, queer, and racialized bodies. Seeking out digital wrinkles, pixelated sags, and data-worn surfaces is not just about aesthetic variation—it is a refusal of the systemic assumption of youth, smoothness, and the defaulting of bodies to white, thin, and taut forms. By interrogating what is missing from our visual and algorithmic landscapes, we open up new ways of seeing, resisting, and counteracting the accelerating flow of exclusionary digital images.

In a political climate marked by increasing attacks on marginalized identities, the presence of Black women in psychology challenges traditional narratives about whose voices and contributions matter. Historically, Black theorists and psychologists have confronted white supremacist narratives in the field, yet their contributions remain largely invisible. 
Many Black women in psychology actively challenge not only racist and sexist structures but also the systems that have historically pathologized Black bodies and denied them agency—particularly within a field that has long engaged in Black erasure (The Association for Black Psychologists (2021). [Response to APA Apology]).

As psychologists, we are responsible for protecting and uplifting the mental health and autonomy of others. However, as Black women psychologists, we face the added burden of navigating the complexities of our racial and gender identities, which further threaten our safety and presence both within the field and society. In doing this work, Black women psychologists actively challenge the anti-DEI backlash, resisting efforts to erase our contributions in psychology.
This presentation will explore how Black women in psychology amplify their voices, redefine power, and engage in activism that both resists and redefines dominant norms within psychology. Through the integration of research and first-person narrative, I will reflect on how I, as a future clinical psychologist, reclaim my agency, disrupt anti-DEI frameworks, and resist the legal, cultural, and political forces that seek to erase Black women’s contributions in psychology.

What is the role of literature, specifically poetry, in approaching feminism? By analyzing the collection of poems “La Terra Santa” by the Italian writer Alda Merini, this paper explores poetry as a site of feminism and resistance, and how through a deeper understanding of the body (both as a physical matter and as a conceptual space within the text), it is possible to re-think social justice within our society. Disciplines like gender studies and disability studies are theoretical approaches that acknowledge the interconnection between oppressive practices and marginalized bodies, applying feminist theories to challenge traditional views on non-conforming bodies. Drawing on the work of feminist scholars like Sarah Ahmed and the Italian Carla Lonzi, as well as disability studies expert Alison Kafer, the paper will foreground the interconnection between disability, corporeality, and body emphasizing their importance in re-shaping our perspectives on possible social realities. Starting from the understanding of literature and culture, I will focus on how “non-conforming” bodies turn from being isolated entities into active agents of change, offering a means to reshape the concepts of humanness, empathy, and social care in our society.

This study examines the queer SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) community and two social party spaces in New York City––Tarab NYC and Yalla! Party Project. While most studies of the queer SWANA population have focused on identity construction or the community in the SWANA region, few have examined the inner workings of community organizations and how individuals perceive them. Through ethnographic observations and interviews over 7 months, I find that the queer SWANA population experiences isolation, exotification, or invisibility in white queer spaces and also through the naming label of “queer”.

These circumstances foreground creating and attending queer SWANA spaces in hopes of cultural relatability and community-building. However, following October 7, 2023, the intensification of the Palestinian genocide and attacks in Lebanon shifted the meaning-making of these spaces, as participants struggled with moments of guilt and shame. These social spaces engage in political actions to some extent, such as attending protests as a bloc. However, this poses various responses for attendees, as some prefer a depoliticized space. Further, while many community members emphasize the safety of their identities merging and forming strong social ties with others, some participants experience the spaces as gendered “bubbles”. Unlike cisgender men, non-cisgender men did not find a tight-knit group through these spaces, but rather through other avenues. Therefore, this research explores a politicized population and contested identity during a critical political moment. It problematizes understandings of social spaces that were originally intended to provide refuge for a marginalized community and showcases the gendered realities and power structures within the queer SWANA community. 

As many as 4,000 unregulated pregnancy centers (UPCs) can be found in city centers, suburban strip malls, and at rural crossroads in all 50 states. They provide free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds to thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of pregnant people each year. Poor women, young women and girls, and women and girls of color disproportionately interact with UPCs, and national medical organizations warn of UPCs’ deceptive tactics and diversionary effect from medical settings, yet UPCs are unencumbered by state and federal regulations or oversight and increasingly buoyed by state and federal dollars.
In the mid-1990s, Pennsylvania became the first state to directly fund UPCs just as federal welfare “reform” replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children entitlement program with the Temporary Aid for Needy Families block grant. This change allowed Pennsylvania to fund UPCs with dollars it had previously given directly to poor mothers. Until 2023, Pennsylvania provided millions to these religiously-affiliated entities, endorsing UPCs’ embeddedness in the welfare state and the gaps in accessible, affordable maternal health care revealed by UPCs’ presence. (Haugeberg 2017; Kimport et al. 2018) This research will explore the socio-political conditions under which UPCs were first allocated public money and examine the circumstances under which the policy ended. It will add to the nascent literature reevaluating policy debates/decisions and political and organizational strategies in the Dobbs era.