Migration and Carceral Deterrence
Utterances of God on the Border
This project considers the religious worlds embedded in the forces of border imperialism through a discursive analysis of letters written by migrants in detention on the U.S.-Mexico border during the Trump administration. This project, tentatively entitled, Utterances of the Sacred on the Border, also considers parallel discourses of security, racialized incarceration, and systems of belief that uphold the idea that the Border is God.
Discourses and Practices of Protection
Gods and Guns
This project ethnographically engages the religious worlds that sustain discourses of protection, salvation, and redemption within structures of security and organized crime through a comparative project between Brazil and Colombia.
Becoming Sovereign, becoming peaceful
Cultures of Restoration
Former guerrilla combatants, Afro-Colombian leaders, Indigenous cabildos, and campesino organizations work together to rebuild social fabric in post-peace accord Colombia. This project considers the moral imaginations shared across culture and race in the making of a fragile peace in Colombia.