On September 11, Professor Martin F. Manalansan was welcomed by a packed room at U of T’s Munk School of Global Affairs. In “Queer Dwellings: Migrancy, Precarity and Fabulosity,” Prof. Manalansan

“builds” and reflects on the nuances of Martin Heidegger’s notion of dwelling in these precarious times. Although about the early 20th century, Heidegger’s understanding of dwelling offers a way of critically engaging w ith the present-day violence and banality of survival by undocumented immigrants in the U.S. Utilizing ethnographic fieldwork and deploying recent critical theories on affect, the senses, and ideas about queer time and space, Manalansan’s presentation focuses on the exigencies and struggles of a group of undocumented immigrants in New York City. “Queer Dwellings” is about the paradoxical, ambivalent, often incoherent messy daily arrangements and encounters between people living in the margins. [Taken from the U of T press release]

Listen and enjoy! [audio:2012.10/Manalansan.mp3]

Martin F. Manalansan IV is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Asian American Studies and Conrad Professorial Humanities Scholar at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is an affiliate faculty in the Gender and Women’s Studies Program, the Global Studies Program and the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory. He is the author of “Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora.”