Poster #3 - Nepantlerx: A Shape-Shifting Duo-Ethnography Exploring the Borderlands of Gender and Nation

• In Event: 31.094 - MTCC Poster Session Six
  In Poster Session: 31.094-1 - Curriculum on the Truths/Ethics Borderlands

Abstract

Initially brought together to work on Photovoice, a project about the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting, the researchers were inspired to explore their own feelings about gender, sexuality and “outness.” A parallel track of autobiographical inquiry emerged and resulted in a duo ethnography (Norris & Sawyer, 2012) around the intersections of queerness and terrorism. What emerged organically was an Anzaldúan autohistoria-teoría, personal and spiritual shadow work (Anzaldúa, 2000), which took us to the borders of gender and conflicted spaces of existence between arbitrary boundaries. Instead of dichotomous methods, in which colonization is reenacted, we draw on Anzaldúa’s anti-colonial struggle against literary assimilation. Thus, merging nos/otras or us/them for a pedagogic approach which challenges hierarchies, but validates our hybridized perspectives as subaltern.

Authors

• Lobat Asadi, Texas A&M University - College Station

• Mario I Suárez, Utah State University