research agenda
How might ideas of migration, labor, and intimacy change when the movement occurs not on land, but across territories of water? Combining questions posed in environmental studies, Filipino studies, feminist science, technology and society (sts) studies, and theories of the transpacific/archipelagic, my research is broadly interested in emerging relationships that occur in transoceanic transit. This extends to how logistical transport might reinforce and systematize the colonization of space on land and at sea.
My book project unfamiliar waters thinks about how extractive industries around water (oil, fishing, mining) imprint on contemporary cultural production in the Philippines and beyond. Think about the following: international marine space, domestic freshwater space, and storms. Now envision them. Now listen to them. Now read them. In poetry, film, and archival documents, these three “bodies” of water are textured by histories of race, labor exploitation, and extraction. By reading film, poetry, and fiction by people who have been engaging in people-first movements and social issues from the time of the Marcos dictatorship to now, Filipino artists unveil, share and push for ways to live beyond the limits of extraction.