VIDEO AVAILABLE ON REQUEST
Please send the title of the talk and the name of the presenter in an email to hgv5008@psu.edu to request a private link.
The final Digital Sawyer of the Fall 2024 semester featured Dr. Maria Elena Indelicato delivering a thought-provoking lecture exploring the intersections of reproductive racism, anti-gender politics, and migration within European and global contexts. Her presentation examined how gender has historically functioned as a “symbolic glue,” enabling coalitions between disparate political actors unified by nationalist, racist, and patriarchal agendas.
During her talk, Indelicato expanded on the concept of reproductive racism, where migration and population management policies are weaponized against racialized groups. Migrant women, particularly Muslim and non-white women, are often depicted both as threats (due to perceived high fertility rates) and as helpless victims requiring integration through state intervention. This dual framing legitimizes restrictive migration policies, limits reproductive rights, and enforces cultural assimilation.
Moreover, Dr. Maria Elana argued that gender functions as a racializing technology by defining which bodies are deemed legitimate within national imaginaries. Through this lens, white women are framed as the rightful reproducers of the nation, while racialized women are often seen as biological threats. She connected these dynamics to colonial histories, emphasizing how family structures, reproductive rights, and migration policies intersect within frameworks of white supremacy and settler colonialism.
Indelicato critiqued concepts such as feminationalism and homo-nationalism, showing how feminist and LGBTQ+ rights have been appropriated by nationalist agendas to justify anti-migrant and Islamophobic policies. She proposed moving beyond the framing of gender as a “symbolic glue” to a more comprehensive understanding of reproductive racism that accounts for the material consequences of migration policies on racialized families.
The talk concluded with an appeal for feminist scholars to rethink entrenched theoretical frameworks, emphasizing that gender and race cannot be separated within the analysis of migration and nationalism.
We also thank Dr. Indelicato for sparking a conversation on land acknowledgment, even in digital spaces. We acknowledge that Penn State’s campuses
are located on the original homelands of the Erie, Haudenosaunee (Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and Tuscarora), Lenape (Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe, Stockbridge-Munsee), Monongahela, Shawnee (Absentee, Eastern, and Oklahoma), Susquehannock, and Wahzhazhe (Osage) Nations. As a land grant institution, we acknowledge and honor the traditional caretakers of these lands and strive to understand and model their responsible stewardship. We also acknowledge the longer history of these lands and our place in that history.
To learn more, check out our upcoming events for next semester: Upcoming Events.
