Bodies, Borders, and Territory

I'm at the AAG (geographer's conference) and looking forward to the Bodies, Borders, and Territory Sessions on Sunday - I'm on the panel at the end. Here's the great description of the sessions:

Feminist geographers are engaging foundational, long-standing geopolitical debates through the lens of the body, both as a scale and a site of study, while also introducing previously neglected questions and perspectives. An attention to bodies has revealed that geopolitical conflicts are felt in a variety of ways at micro-scales, and that these conflicts are often shaped by the everyday experiences of bodies on the ground. At the same time, scholars have effectively demonstrated that bodies themselves are frequently contested in much the same ways as territory: they are treated as frontiers and interiors, they are counted and managed, and they are often invoked to represent the fate or well-being of territory and imagined communities at larger scales.

This session aims to explore the intersections of bodies and territory, with a particular focus on borders and boundaries. Some of the questions we aim to address include: Through what sorts of structures and processes is the body made into territory? How are borders enforced through bodies, and how do bodies themselves become borders? How are bodies mapped onto territory and how are territories mapped or marked onto bodies? In what ways do bodies make borders porous, and how are bodies themselves unbounded? How might bodies expand the possibilities of resistance to uneven power structures and oppressive political projects, and how do people resist being used as objects for geopolitical ends? In the spirit of feminist geopolitics, papers in this session are informed by fieldwork and that engage critically with methodologies and researcher subjectivities.