The Feminist Studies Department at UC Santa Cruz is pleased to host Jasbir Puar, Distinguished Faculty of Arts Professor, Global Race Studies at the University of British Columbia, presenting Field Notes: Colonial Power at the Thresholds of Gender Studies.

Jasbir Puar’s research focuses on how the liberal state, sexuality, and bio-politics bear on our understanding of disability. In her most recent book, The Right to Maim, Prof. Puar uses the concept of “debility”— bodily injury and social exclusion brought on by economic and political factors — to disrupt the category of disability, and shows how debility, disability, and capacity constitute an assemblage that states use to control populations. Interrogating Israel’s policies toward Palestine, she outlines how Israel brings Palestinians into biopolitical being by designating them available for injury.

Jasbir Puar is a Distinguished Faculty of Arts Professor of Global Race Studies at the University of British Columbia. Her most recent book, The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability (2017, Duke University Press) explores how the liberal state, sexuality, and biopolitics bear on our understanding of disability, culminating in an interrogation of Israel’s policies toward Palestine.